I attended a dance camp; there were bunkhouses, separate shower buildings, a cafeteria, etc. When I got there, folks directed us to drive “round Robin’s barn” from the entrance to the parking area. I didn’t understand why at the time, but later noticed that the shorter driveway traversed some 4″ PVC pipe; rainwater drain pipes, I assumed.

A couple of days into the camp, I was in the cafeteria getting some salad, when a particular leaf of “lettuce” struck me as odd. It wasn’t lettuce at all, but a paper towel thoroughly saturated in some greenish fluid.

I reported this to an uninterested employee, and thereafter ate only thoroughly cooked food.

To cut to the chase, about a third of the attendees came down with some sort of dysentery. The situation was bad enough that the state health department got called in. I managed to escape with no significant ailment, but vowed never to return to that camp.

I heard later that the camp was on shaky financial footing and had hired locals with no professional food prep experience. In addition, those 4″ PVC pipes were apparently sewer lines, and at least one had broken.

Years ago I worked at a summer camp run by the church. One of the rules was that all music played by the staff had to be kid-friendly, which made sense. However, the kitchen staff were let off a bit, as they usually worked when the kids were out doing activities. This particular kitchen staff had two playlists: a non-kid-friendly one for prepping meals, and a kid-friendly one for mealtime. It’s important to note that you could see and hear into the kitchen from the dining hall.

One night, while the kids were still in the dining hall, one of the kitchen staff turned on the stereo and walked away to start cleanup duties. However he didn’t realize that the non-kid-friendly playlist was still cued up from earlier. I was in the kitchen asking someone a question, when suddenly I heard loud drums, electric guitar, and a growling heavy metal voice start to scream: “FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU– “

Immediately, the staff member who turned on the stereo dove across the room and unplugged the system to kill the music. The rest of us just stared at him in shock and then started to laugh hysterically. Fortunately, the camp director wasn’t around to hear the “F-bomb” near-miss, but for the rest of the summer, the kitchen staff were very careful to check the playlist before turning on any music!

(We farm goats. Sometimes first-time nanny goats have twins, and sometimes they reject one of the twins. When this happens, we have to bottle-feed the rejected kid. The first few weeks, it’s pretty much a 24/7 proposition, but not one that’s too hard to take as kids are mobile pretty much from the get-go, and small enough to be portable. It also helps that they’re adorable. Rather than cancel a camping trip, I take a red-brown female kid trailer-camping with my family.)

Campers #1, #2, and #3: *all separate occasions* “What kind of a dog is that?”

Me: “She’s not a dog; she’s a goat. I’m bottle-raising her.”

(Reactions range from “cool!” to “that’s stupid,” and I quickly grow weary of folk who can’t tell a goat from a dog.)

Camper #4: “What kind of a dog is that?”

Me: “She’s a Chupacabra-doodle.”

(I’m at a music summer camp. While leaving one of the nightly concerts, I see a girl, who I recognize as a French horn player from my orchestra program, on the ground, and a staff member next to her. I quickly realize that she is injured. As I’m walking over to ask if she’s okay, I hear her listing where she’s hurt.)

Girl: “Both knees… uhh… oh! And my elbow.”

(The staff member next to her shines her phone’s flashlight around, and I see that her knees are both scraped and bleeding. I don’t see her elbow.)

Me: *reaching her* “Hey, are you okay?”

Girl: “Ah, yeah! …Probably.”

(Seeing my discomfort with that answer, she proceeds to wiggle her fingers and put weight on her left hand, then looks back up at me.)

Girl: “Oh, yeah, I can still play.”

(Note that she didn’t check her knees at all or mention how she was, outside of playing horn. Well, good to know she had her priorities straight.)

(I spend a weekend with a friend who is in grad school studying physics. He explains to me the idea of Schrodinger’s Cat and how it relates to what’s called the Double-Slit Experiment. While I find later that what he told me about the cat is actually a common misunderstanding of the illustration — in that he says the cat is literally dead or alive until it’s observed as either; not actually the case — my mind is nonetheless blown by what he explains to me. I make it home, and a couple weeks later I go on a camping trip with a bunch of guys. We sit around the fire that night, bringing up interesting things to discuss, and I remember Schrodinger’s Cat. Humorous ignorance ensues.)

Me: “So, if you were to put a cat in a box, and… Oh, gosh, how did it go? You put poison in the box and the cat maybe eats it or doesn’t? Anyway, there’s somehow a 50% chance the cat dies, but it’s in the box, and you can’t see if it happened or not. The cat is both alive and dead at the same time until you check the box.”

Friend #1: “What? That’s bull-s***.”

Me: “No, it’s physically proven! It has to do with this experiment with… electrons or something going through slits, and how they appear on a screen.”

Friend #1: “You can’t see electrons!”

Me: “No, I know, but it’s projecting onto the screen somehow.”

Friend #2: “So, if you kill a cat and put it in a box, then—”

Me: “—no, no, no. The cat’s alive when you put it in the box with the poison—”

Friend #3: “How are you supposed to keep the cat from eating the poison?”

Me: “You aren’t. There’s a 50% chance that it will.”

Friend #3: “I don’t see how that’s possible. You can’t control a cat like that.”

Me: “It’s something I’m sure I’m forgetting. I know the 50% chance of killing the cat is part of it. I think you have to assume that.”

Friend #4: “Okay, I’ve not been paying attention, but now I’m intrigued. Why does [My Name] want to poison cats?”

Me: “I’m not advocating poisoning cats!”

Friend #1: “No, it’s not about poisoning cats. I guess you shoot electrons through a poison cat and—”

Friend #2: “—see, I thought he said if you can make it a 50% chance to poison a cat but don’t watch, you get two cats, but one is dead.”

Me: “Are you guys actually being serious right now?”

(They were.)

Friend #1: “Don’t get mad at us. You’re the one talking about poisoning cats with electrons.”

(I gave up and then someone brought up football or action movies or cage fighting and we talked about that for hours, instead.)