Camp Superkids

My great aunt got it in her head one summer that she wanted to send me to Asthma camp. While I wasn’t completely thrilled with the idea my parents didn’t want to disappoint my great-aunt because once you’ve lived that long no one argues with you anymore. So on one hot July day I found myself at Camp Superkids (we weren’t different…we were super!). The “cabins” were these long sterile buildings, complete with air conditioning and no mattresses. You see sending about 100 or so kids who can’t breath to a camp is pretty much a worthless idea. All of the counselors were these super fit, athletic type college students. Instead of fun camp activities like swimming we got to experience calisthenics (yes they called it that and yes just hearing that word still makes me cringe). Then instead of a fun craft time or nature walk we had health class where doctors brought in a set of pig lungs. They showed us how regular lungs worked and how lungs that had been traumatized by cigarette smoke made you want to puke. This would have been great in a high school biology class but to a ten year old that had been sleeping in a sterile room it was like something out of nightmares. Then at night when normal camp kids would have been hanging out around the campfire roasting marshmallows the Superkid campers found themselves in a small cabin type building taking our breathing treatments. The best part was that some kid taught me how to blow smoke rings with my nebulizer (which ironically I nicknamed my "breathing machine"), a skill which sadly have forgotten. To top it off a girl in my group managed to get hit in the temple with one of those parachute men. I was lucky enough to be standing beside her when this happened. She needed stitches and I had about enough. The only letter my mom recieved that week from me said;“I hate camp. Please, please, please bring me home.” It was like Camp Granada (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Hx_X84LC0) except the rain never cleared.