Memories of Bible Camp And Smoking Things…Also, God Finds Poop Funny.

No dreams to report from this weekend. Shame. I know there were a few good ones. They were there in vivid detail when I woke, but as the sleepy haze cleared, the dream images faded. Happens sometimes.

But, this weekend wasn’t without its noteworthy moments. On Saturday there was a gathering of old family friends. Friends that stuck with us thick and thin, that were there during the best of times and the worst of times in the nightmare that was called the International Church of Christ. ICOC for short. Also known as the cult.  

Anyway, it was a day of reminiscing all the horrible and funny things within that cult experience. It brought me back to being fifteen, when I was fighting my inevitable fate to join the cult through copious amounts of pot and boys. As much as I resented the cult, I knew our fates were as entangled as the hair on my head. A stray one might fly away, but its trail will always lead right back to where it started.

So, fifteen, summer, what better to do than Bible camp? I went because some of my other friends from church were going. Plus, a friend from school was coming with me, so it seemed like it would be a fun time, despite the Jesus stuff.

The night before, a few friends spent the night at my house, so we could all travel together in the morning. That night, we all headed down to the baseball fields – Carlson Field off of Louisiana Avenue in St. Louis Park to be exact – and smoked lots of pot. Out of a pop can, nonetheless.

As we made the fourteen hour drive or whatever to the camp in Michigan, we alternated music between the occupants of the car. The teen leader preferred the likes of Celine Dion, which was so painful. I preferred the likes of Alice in Chains. Dirt just happened to be my favorite album at the time (and still is one of my favs to this day). The teen leader told me years later she was scared of me then. Scary music, scary attitude.

Awesome and proud of that, actually.

When we arrived at camp, all I could think about was how I hadn’t gotten the chance to procure a stash of smokes before leaving.  And I had cashed my pot stash the night before. I immediately decided this was going to be the shittiest four days of my entire life. Even shittier than that time I was grounded for three weeks for shoplifting.

But, in a stroke of luck, I discovered one of the fellow Minneapolis attendees was a smoker. He was slightly younger than me. We’d never really been friends, but we’d been in Sunday school together growing up. So dude and I would sneak off into the woods to share a Marlboro Red. How awesome that he smoked my brand, too?

So, random memories from Bible camp:

• Terrible food.
• Drinking Kool-Aid from metal cups that tasted like copper.
• Somebody’s poop clogging one of the toilets in the girl’s bathroom. Trust me, it was one of the biggest poops I’ve ever seen. Totally worthy of remembrance.
• During one of the group games, some girl took off her sweatshirt without realizing she was taking off ALL shirts with it. The boys had an emergency meeting to ensure they were not thinking naughty thoughts. And that last bit is absolutely true.
• Trying not to giggle during evening prayer when some girl started crying while praying. I know this makes me sound awful, but trust me when I say it was just weird.  
• Girls had to wear t-shirts over their bathing suits during swim time.
• Being pissed off when my group leader would wake me up at 7am to read the Bible with her.
• Refusing to go horseback riding, because I’m afraid of horses.
• A fellow teen in my group with the last name Nagel. “Pronounced like bagel, only with an N,” as he would say.
• A fellow teen named Grant that I wished hadn’t yet taken the vow of chastity. Such a shame.
• My friend’s Rolling Stones t-shirt – she told me she still wears it to this day.
• Sitting on a picnic table at the beach, watching other teens that were crazy for Christ and thinking, “Fuck. This is my destiny, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if I want it or not, it has to be this way.”

The last two days of Bible camp, I gave in. I let them have me. I was tired of fighting expectation. I was the oldest daughter of a pair of revered ICOC members. They were pillars in the congregation. Everybody and their brother expected me to do this. Was it better to do this now? Get it over with? Sigh. Yes, best to just get it out of the way.  

So, the last couple of days at Bible camp, I stopped meeting dude in the woods for smokes. Even stopped lusting after the luscious Grant. That was harder than not smoking, by the way.  And when we got back from Bible camp, I told my parents that I was ready to take the plunge.

There’s more to the story, but it’s an emotional and exhausting story that isn’t quite ready to be told. But, little tidbit, shortly after this trip my mom was helping me clean my room. She was grabbing all the crap I shoved under my bed. She lifted a partially crushed pop can with crude holes smothered in sooty ash.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Um, nothing,” I quickly said. “You can throw it away.”

To my relief, she did so without looking at the thing any closer.

And for the record, I never stopped finding the massive poop that clogged the girls’ toilet as funny. If there is a God, apparently He finds it funny, too. After all, He created poop. And farts. Let not forget those.