My Experience at Camping on Campus

By Siona Kirschner

An undisclosed number of years ago, I made the fateful mistake of accompanying my younger sibling to camping-on-campus, an event hosted by the local elementary school where 6-10 year olds sleep in tents on a massive field dangerously under-supervised by their parents. Today, I have made the brave choice to share what I experienced in the hope that other older siblings who have experienced this will have the courage to step forward.

5:00 p.m. - The festivities begin. I arrive with my tent and an open mind, unaware of the horrors that await.

5:01 p.m. - A seven-year-old runs past me with a lollipop. Unfortunately, only the seven-year-old actually succeeds in passing me. The lollipop does not; it sticks to my arm. Neither of us are happy with the situation. The seven-year-old calls me a thief. Luckily I am more than happy to return the drool-covered candy before the altercation escalates. I am particularly thankful for this because I am not confident that this is a fight I would have won.

6:00 p.m. - An early dinner is served. This is good news because the children are already getting hangry and I wouldn’t put cannibalism past them. I learn later that this is also bad news because there are many hours before the kids will be convinced to go to sleep, and hangriness will unfortunately descend again.

6:34 p.m. - Whoever is running this event has made the mistake of arming the little demons with water balloons. Things take a turn for the worse and I am forced to change into my pajamas earlier than anticipated. 

6:59 p.m. - A candy stand is set out. This is an unfortunate display of weakness on the part of the parent volunteers, revealing that they cannot wait the extra minute to seven without satiating the children with candy. I personally do not blame them and would have probably served the candy at 6:35 out of sheer desperation to escape the water balloon attacks. It is a good thing I am not in charge because even this one minute of weakness is noted by the children - what little respect they previously had for authority is now officially gone.

7:41 p.m. - A sugar-high descends on every single one of the children. They run around shrieking and playing some indecipherable game. This lasts for an impressively long amount of time. Clearly these children ate a lot of candy and maybe it was spiked.

8:07 p.m. - Out of boredom, I decide to join a table of adults playing poker as a spectator. I am clearly unwelcome but also ignored so I don’t think I am too much of an intrusion. Unrelated to my presence (related to cheating), a fight breaks out. I don’t mean to come off as judgemental, but I can see where the kids got their immature tendencies.

9:00 p.m. - I retreat to my tent under the (false) impression that it will be a safe place to reside.

9:55 p.m. - The candy is put away in an attempt to begin moving the children towards sleep. This is where things truly take a turn for the worse.

9:56 p.m. - The children are quick to act on this obstruction of their rights as individuals to eat alarming amounts of candy. A militia is quickly organized and armed with sticks, proving in the children a resourceful ability to find weapons even when water balloons are not being placed into their grubby hands. A storm on the capital (aka where the candy is stored) begins.

9:58 p.m. - The militia gathers steam fast. They manage to find a drum and begin an angry chant.

10:01 p.m. - The militia (now more accurately referred to as an army) puts its opposition into a difficult position and moves on to negotiations while it has the high ground. The army of children is given M & Ms.

10:30 p.m. - Bedtime is declared. This leads to unfortunate rioting on the streets (school playground). The price of peace is the abolition of bedtime and the concession of more candy. These demands cannot be met and the battle continues.

10:35 p.m. - For the past several hours I have been a silent observer from my tent; now I realize that no one is safe. My tent is being hit with a stick and suddenly it starts to sway. A shadow moves overhead and I realize that someone is trying to climb it. I stay as still as I can and text my friends that if they don’t remember me fondly I will haunt them as a loving way of saying goodbye.

1:00 a.m. - It has been 32 minutes since the children’s army was finally neutralized due to their over-exhaustion. All the progress made is quickly undone when I hear a shriek from a closeby tent.

1:01 a.m. - The good news is that the shriek was because a child saw a spider and believed (falsely) that it was a black widow. The bad news is that it woke everyone up and now every single child is in a tizzy over the possibility of deadly spiders in their tents. I suspect the main instigators of the drama to be attention-getters who do not want to go to sleep as opposed to genuinely frightened children.

1:23 a.m. - The parents successfully calm their children and there is momentary silence.

1:24 a.m. - Someone (unprovenly suspected to be one of the main instigators of the spider fiasco) screams YOU ARE MY FIRE (very off-key). This leads to every single person on that cursed field screaming the entirety of I Want it That Way (parents included). I confess that even I was swept up in this frenzy and sang as well, but I was very disgruntled about it.

1:29 a.m. - Everyone shuts up (finally).

6:02 a.m. - The children wake up, nearly an hour before the schedule promised that commotion would resume. I am woken abruptly to the sound of Disney songs being sung very loudly and very, very close by. I realize that the singers are standing in a circle around my tent and it occurs to me that this might be a ritual sacrifice in which I am the lamb.

6:05 a.m. - The potential sacrifice is forgotten when someone all the way across the field says that they want breakfast. Word quickly spreads and now everyone is in desperate need of breakfast.

6:06 a.m. - The children are told breakfast won’t be served until seven, the time they were supposed to wake up. The response to this is mostly very loud, very whiny, whining. It seems the fight has gone out of them after successfully waging war on the adults the night before.

7:00 a.m. - Breakfast is served, as promised. The exact timing shows that the parent volunteers no longer fear the children as they once did when they served the candy a minute early. The power dynamic has shifted.

7:09 a.m. - Pavilions bagels have been inhaled at an inhuman rate and every single child is instantly dying to go home. Luckily, the parents share their wishes and the eventful camping experience comes to an end.