Hope you enjoy this story for the
Summer Lovin' Story Contest 2022
. A vote and comment would certainly be welcome!
Summer of 1994 Georgia:
The summer heat in Georgia was something I would never get used to. One week as a camp counselor at some unpronounceable Indian named Bible themed campground and I had already decided that it was one week too many. It had seemed a great idea while in high school a few months back to get some valuable leadership experience over the summer. Plan A was to then use that experience to get a resident assistant job once at college. The pay was awful but college resident assistants got reduced tuition, room, and board. The resident assistants position were good enough that there was always a waiting line. If Plan A worked as planned then three months at a camp counselor should move me to the front of that line. It was better than getting a part time job as a cashier or working for three months in fast food. As an added perk, it meant I got to spend the summer a thousand miles from home and my parents.
The first night we had a mixer in the main building which served the camp ground as a mess hall, general store, post office, and aid station. In an effort to build the team and have everyone meet the people they would be working with, the lead counselor had asked each us to list three true facts about ourselves and make up one lie. The rest of us would guess which was the false statement.
As the questions and answers session slowly worked it's way around the room, I realized just how dull these people were. One young woman's lie was that she once missed church to visit her sick grandma before quickly telling everyone that she and her grandma would never miss church no matter how sick they were. The lie of the guy sitting next to me was that he had visited Mexico, before confirming that he would never visit Mexico because in his words "They don't know how to speak American there".
I started my four fun facts by talking about how I had come to Georgia for the first time a few years ago to buy a few thousand acers worth of tree farms, had sold it this year for a return was almost three times my investment. I went on to say that I was running for state senate back in Massachusetts. For my third truth I told them I had a partial scholarship to Bob Johnson Farmers University, which should cover most of my costs for the next two years. For my lie I decided to claim to be a native of Georgia.
"Are you a Jew?" one of the girls at the table next to me asked, her face a twisted mask of confusion and revulsion. She quickly made the sign of the cross on her chest. I was not sure of her name, Jessie maybe, or Jamie, something like that.
I pointed out to her that I am not Jewish and none of my fun facts had anything to do with religion.
"The things you were saying were all about money and New York, that means you must be a Jew." She continued on.
"If you're not a Jew, what church do you go to?" Her friend sitting next to her asked.
"Which church did St. Timothy go to before meeting St John? That the same one I attend". I was trying hard to keep myself under control. "Didn't you mother ever tell you it is not polite to talk about religion or politics? And New York city is not in Massachusetts."
At this point the lead camp counselor decided that I must have gotten the instructions wrong, that it should be three facts and one lie. Somehow he had decided that three of my statements must be lies and one of them true. He repeated the instructions for everyone and they quickly when on to the next person. The rest of the question and answer icebreaker went quickly. I tuned it all out, wondering which of my statements they believed was true.
The first week passed in the blink of an eye. Most of the crew had spent first week cleaning up, setting up, and hooking up in the cabins the young campers would be using. I, being somewhat of a gearhead, had spent most of my time alone trying to repair the backup generator, the motor on the motor boat, and most importantly, the HVAC system that provided the air conditioning and hot water to the main buildings of the campground.
The camp ground had been without hot water for the last three years. Back home in Boston Massachusetts, I would have assumed that the owners would have called someone to have it repaired within hours of it failing. In my two weeks in Georgia, I had learned that things that I normally would have taken for granted such as hot water or indoor plumbing were seen as a sort of unnecessary luxury by some segment of the local populace.
Breakfast was a box of cereal. Lunch was open grill from 11am to 2pm. However, everyone was expected to eat dinner together promptly at 6pm. I had quickly come to understand that 6pm Georgia time was anywhere from 6:12 to almost 7pm in normal non-Georgia time.
The first day the young campers arrived for camp drop-off was a hectic mess. Emotions were running high with many of the young campers and their parents experiencing deep anxiety knowing they would be apart for the next few days.
The camp ground hosted an Amazing-Race style scavenger hunt for groups of campers and their parents to visit prominent camp locations. This gave them a chance to visit the dining hall, cabins, the camp store, pool, and horse stables. It also was designed to wear them down so they would sleep soundly the first night.
That night as we were finishing dinner was when I first noticed the herd of deer. At least two dozen were standing at the tree line outside the mess hall. More were on the other side of the building between the mess hall and the lake where tables had been moved to feed the hundreds of kids who had shown up for camp.
Everyone had put down their food and a large crowd of people had gathered on the porch to watch the deer. Finally the deer ran off back into the woods and the young campers went back to their meals.
As it got dark all the young campers were assembled at the fire pit in front of the stage pavilion next to the mess hall. The itinerary for the evening was some skits, a review of the rules and a lengthy lecture on safety, There's nothing young people like more than a lengthy lecture on safety I thought to myself as I watched the kids start to nod off as the camp host explained the camp rules again for the fourth time in five minutes.
Finally we prepared to wrap up the evening with some drug prevention tips told around the fire pit. I had rolled my eyes when I had hear this was the plan for the night. As a boy scout, we had always told scary stories around the camp fire before bed. If anything, such stories would be good at keeping the kids too scared of the dark to sneak out of their cabins.
Jessie, or Jamie, or whatever her name was took to the stage. "Is everyone ready to get a little scared? Okay good, then I wanted to talk to y'all about the two biggest dangers you'll ever fact in life. Drug use and sex before marriage."
All the deer were back, standing at the forest edge in a large group, their eyes glowing with the light reflected off the camp fire.
One of the deer walked up into the clearing. "Hi y'all, I'm Jason the deer and I'm here to talk to y'all tonight about illegal drug use, about drinking and driving, and most importantly about our lord and savior Jesus Christ."
The crowd immediately fell to a stunned silence. Every human pair of eyes was on the herd of deer and all the deer coming out of the woods were staring right back at them.
I would have assumed that talking deer would have a cute child-like voice or maybe an evil demon voice. I would have been wrong, the deer, like everyone else I had spent the last two weeks with, had a Georgia accent. I took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of my nose. A weeks in the heat, listening to all these people talk about Jesus and now the wildlife wants to join in I thought to myself. Maybe I need to come up with a Plan B because this non-stop review of the Bible was really getting old.
The children started screaming. Some ran. Someone ran up and hide under the table right near my feet. I could smell that they had crapped their pants. There are over a dozen tables in the area and it's tater tot night. They could have hide anywhere but felt the need to ruin my enjoyment of my tater tots with their stink. There was no where to hide, the mess hall had a roof but was open on three sides with only a screen to keep out the bugs. I decided to wander on into the mess in the hopes of getting second helping of tater tots maybe enjoy them without having to seat next to people screaming and crapping on themselves.
Some of the older kids were yelling for someone to get a gun to shoot the deer. Jason the deer was screaming back "Oh no, their gonna shoot us, their gonna cut off our skin and put our heads on the wall!" The other deer with him were howling in terror, shaking their deer heads back and forth in a no gesture, antlers waving all around. "Please don't kill us and skin us. IN JESUS NAME I PRAY."
"Get that safe in the kitchen open. There's a gun in the safe." the camp owner was yelling to someone. My guess his wife was in the kitchen attached to the mess hall.
One of the deer was standing in front of the screen door, holding it closed with it's hoof. "Yeah, kids. Did you know you can't save yourselves, only Jesus can save you...and he ain't here. The only ones here tonight are you and us."
"Do you always wear a rubber when you have sex?" the deer asked some guy who was trying to push his way out. Some woman clinging to his shirt burst into tears before trying to hiding behind him. "Think about what would happen to both of you if you got an STD or had a child out of wedlock. Also, you need to lick her pussy before sex, always lick the alphabet. You want me to show you how?" the deer said before sticking it's big black tongue out of it's mouth and waving it around seductively.
I got up and walked to the door nearest Jason the deer with my plate of tots still in hand. "What do you want? Everyone has ruined my dinner with their fear-shits and their screaming. Are you fey? Are you demons or titans...or angels? What is your plan?" I tried not to sound annoyed, my mother's advise ringing in my ears that this Bible camp would be a great place to make friends but that I needed to notice others and be friendly. That I should be engaging others and try to share in their interests. At the time f I rolled my eyes any harder I would be able to see my own brain, but yet here I was trying to make friends with talking deer.
