With all of these crazy hurricanes and tropical storms, it may be easy to forget the little hurricane Idalia, unless you were right in the middle of it, which I was.

Even then, in most storms, people stay in their houses, or in extreme cases, locked in an underground bunker with a year’s supply of oatmeal and your imaginary friend, Timmy the talking football, who’ll teach you how division is just like being a quarterback while simultaneously ramming into your chest. I was right in the middle of the storm, in the woods, with no devices, and a bunch of cheesy camp songs to keep me company.

Some background:

On August 30, 2023, the entire 6th grade of Durham Academy loaded into 3 buses to go to a YMCA camp called Camp Kirkwood. On the way there, in an attempt to pacify us, the teachers turned on a Disney soundtrack, which only agitated us further. To give you a good idea of what this was like, imagine 24 kids in a bus screaming, trading snacks, and generally trying to be heard over one another, while Hakuna Matata plays in the background. Now imagine that you’re in the middle of that bus, and you’re going on a 6 hour trip, and everybody’s screaming and trading and Hakuna Matata-ing the whole way there.

Sorry if that disturbed you.

Wait, no I’m not. I just wrote a whole paragraph about it! You should be sorry for reading it!

Anyway, once we finally get there, the teachers drop the good news: Hurricane fun for everyone! YAY! And guess what? MORE GREAT NEWS! Now we have to carry our BAGS through the RAIN to get to the PAVILION! AWESOME! And now that your bags are SOAKING WET, let’s go to our CABINS and share TOOTHPASTE with RANDOM PEOPLE! HOW INCREDIBLY FUN!

(I… I have a lot to vent, ok?)

So everybody piles into these little cabins, and all night we hear what sounds like a loop of a bunch of marbles being dropped onto a table, and the table is right above your head, and the marbles are infinite, and the table is big, and the marbles are still the same size as marbles, but the table is the roof, and the roof has marbles, and the marbles are also rain, which sounds like… rain.

There was a lot of rain.

There was so much rain, that before I fell asleep I thought my marbles were going to fall off of my table.

I dreamed that I was at home. Home was good. Home was quiet. Home was dry. Home had all the marbles, and they were on the table where they belonged.

And then I woke up and remembered where the marbles really were.

NOT ON THE TABLE.

On to Day 2!

Long story short, rain happens, and 2 people get sick. Everybody is assigned to a group, and mine goes to Kanga Jump, an outdoor trampoline where everybody is safe at all times…

…as long as it’s not wet.

ALSO THERE’S A POOL! LOOK AT THE POOL! IGNORE THE KANGA JUMP! LOOKATTHEPOOOOL! POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

We get some special time with our Advisories (Durham Academy fancy thing; it’s like an elementary school class that you only see in the morning and/or every 6 days) in a creepy maze pattern on the ground.

Finally, the Lorax appears in an attempt to pacify us further and some shaved ice send us several mixed messages. Cool? Cool. ON TO DAY 3!

The sun makes a special guest star appearance, just in time for everyone to fall to their deaths. Kirkwood has this thing called the V-swing, where you trust other people to not let you fall to your death and then you fall to your death. It’s one of those things where you see people screaming and you think, Oh, it’s not that bad, these people are idiots for screaming like this and then you actually get on it and you’re like “😱”. There’s a rope, and people pull the rope to make sure you get the most terrifying experience possible, and your personal wishes can jump into the lake.

Did I mention there’s a lake?

Yeah, there’s a lake, and it nearly flooded my cabin and actually flooded another during Idalia. It’s enormous, home to several canoes, and roadblock on the way to s’mores. Yeah, there’s s’mores. This is a camp, after all. What would a camp do without s’mores? Nothing. During the s’mores, we sang a song about our former life on a pirate ship, at which point everybody became a cannibal.

Everyone meets Bubbles the attention hog, who plays soccer and gets back scratches, sometimes simultaneously.

Finally, at noon, everybody gets into the buses, repeats the Hakuna Matata-ing, and ends up all the way back home. I finally stumble into my car, at which point I collapse from exhaustion.

All in all, it was a fairly average camping trip, and my marbles are still (for the most part) on the table.