sick_wilson | Crafty Campers Challenge

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Crafty Campers Challenge

Hi, fellow campers!

One of the things most people remember about summer camp is the crafts. At all the camps I went to, crafts were a required part of the experience. They were a chance for campers to express their creativity.

Just like this Crafty Campers Challenge!

Write a story, drabble, poem, or what you please in which Wilson injures himself doing some sort of summer-camp craft. To help you out, I've listed the camp crafts I can remember being asked to do when I was a kid -- you can use one of those, or one from your own memories of camping days gone by. And, of course, you'll need to account for why Wilson is doing this at all -- maybe he took a part-time job as a camp counselor to help pay for the road trip!

But however he got there, and whyever he's doing it, he got himself hurt. How did it happen? That's up to you!

Here are the crafts I remember (and I'm probably showing my age!):

Braiding friendship bracelets or lanyard key chains
Making snake-coil style clay bowls and pots
Painting on pieces of slate
Wrapping yarn around sticks to make an ojo de Dios
Painting bricks (or smooth rocks) to make door stops or garden decorations
Pouring plaster of Paris into paper plates and then using leaves or flowers to make artistic "impressions"
Making "nature collages" by gluing leaves, flowers, and so forth onto pieces of bark
Using a nail and a rock to punch holes in a tin can to make a "candle lantern"
Macramé! Oh, god, the macramé! Belts, potted plant hangers, "tapestries" . . .
Making popsicle stick "looms" and then "weaving" potholders
"Finger Knitting" -- wrapping yarn around our fingers to create long strings of loops
Dipping strings into melted wax to make candles
Melting crayons of many colors and then dripping the wax on soda bottles to make "vases"
Origami -- folding all kinds of critters out of paper
Making creatures out of paper plates
Making creatures out of regular and miniature marshmallows and toothpicks
Making "mosaics" by gluing colored grains of rice to cardboard

Okay, I'll stop now, the memories are starting to horrify me! Feel free to use them to horrify Wilson, too.

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It sounds horrifying. Macramé? Seriously? How did they ever get boys to do macramé? Or are such camps gender segregated?
Horror, indeed.

I was an arts and crafts counselor for 4 years (way, way back....) and boys loved this stuff. Especially younger boys. Lanyard was for some reason their favorite. They made necklaces and bracelets out of the stuff. I also notice that here in So. Ca. a lot of surfer boys wear these woven macrame bracelets that can't be removed without cutting them.

I do recall that for the older boys we let them work with leather and make wallets and belts and bracelets that they called "cuffs" at the time.

Most camps do segregate into boy and girl and girl groups once you are past the youngest ages.

My daughter went once, for some weeks, to a camp which was not on the seaside, and there they had the option of doing art and crafts, but she refused :). Lazy like mom. With my own kids I have observed (and been appalled) how their natural tastes got enhanced or repressed by peer pressure, great that in the US they are more free.

OT/personal I was an arts and crafts counselor for 4 years
I would have preferred cleaning the toilets.

Most of the camps I've been to only segregate the kids for sleeping and showering (although some camps are only for girls or boys). I took arts and crafts classes at summer camp and there were usually a few boys there. I also took a class where we built and launched model rockets and archery both of which were mostly boys but there were a few girls in there too. We had swimming class with boys and girls together, lunch, evening activities, etc.

Edited 2012-06-27 17:25 (UTC)

Interesting. Showering separated seems a good idea :) but I'm impressed they can talk boys into that kind of crafts.The other weird thing: you stay at camp overnight! My kids all went to summer camps, but it was usually 9-4 or 9-5 and most of the time was spent bathing, eating and playing. Thank you! I'm learning all kinds of interesting things about the US lifestyle :).

When I first encountered the concept of 'summer camps' where you sent your kids away for six weeks or whatever I was a little horrified. Then when my sister had kids I thought it would have been an excellent idea :)

when my sister had kids
We all learn that way :). The twins hated even the day camp, though, so I'm glad my uncle is willing to keep them for the summer.

My husband was sent to the summer camps you mention once, at age 10, and he still has some form of PSTD from it ;).

There are two types of camps in the US. We have sleep away camp where you leave for between two and eight weeks, and day camps where you are there all day but not at night. There are also camps where you go camping/ hiking/ rafting, camps specifically for a single religious group where you spend part of the day studying religious texts and in prayer, and camps that specialize in activities like horseback riding, chess, computers, acting, or fencing. Except for the wilderness camps, most of these places have everything from horseback riding to drama to archery to arts and crafts.

As for talking boys into crafts, it's not too hard. Most camps (day or overnight) allow the kids to pick out their own activity schedule (some camps are less open to this) and so usually boys only end up in arts and crafts if they want to do arts and crafts. Also, while some camps make you do specific crafts on certain days, most of the ones I've been to allow you to do pretty much whatever you want whenever you want to do.

Thank you so much for the explanation!

It's surprisingly hard to get the details of everyday life right. It's like when I first went shopping for groceries in the US: there were whole aisles of food I had no clue what it was. [I remember googling cool aid, LMAO].

Here's my entry, a crafty ficlet. I'm posting it here since it's so short:

House was putting the finishing touches on a clay threadworm when he heard the crash.

Wilson lay in the floor, amidst an assortment of cardboard boxes. Colored grains of rice, lanyard, and bags of plaster of Paris were scattered across the floor. Several bald kids asked if Wilson was okay.

House helped Wilson into a chair. “Here’s a clue. If he’s lying on the floor, he’s not okay.”

Wilson rubbed at his back. “I was carrying too much, couldn’t see the floor. Must have tripped on something.”

House combed through the debris. He snatched up a holey tin can with a triumphant, “Aha!”

“I slipped on a candle lantern?”

House took the lantern back and set it on the table. He took a candle stub from the art supplies, lit it, and dropped it inside.

“There, now we can all see the light.”

Wilson's hand remained on his back, but he smiled.

Edited 2012-06-27 14:34 (UTC)

LOL. Alongside being the head of oncology, Wilson is also the oncology department's arts and crafts counselor (you just knowhe does stuff like that).

Love House's silly humor. He often does that to cover his concern. And because he's 8.

Thanks! House has a wicked sense of humor.

It's only now that I can't edit, of course, that I find an error in the fic. Wilson being IN the floor would be a real problem. Well, maybe the floor was still soggy from the last time the toilets overflowed. :)

Well, maybe the floor was still soggy from the last time the toilets overflowed. :)

LOL! Well House is at this camp after all... Great story, although now I want to know why House is at the camp doing arts and crafts - the mocking potential? Wilson blackmailed him ?

If you'll re-read, i very carefully didn't say anything about the setting. I was aiming for a short, near-drabble length fic, so i cut out every detail i didn't absolutely need. With the result that this could take place at a camp for kids with cancer, or at PPTH's peds ward, or somewhere else entirely.

And if those questions should inspire you to write something of your own, well, that would be a good thing.

Oops! Sorry, you're quite right - I must have camps stuck on my brain :)

Ohhh I love this! Good reason for Wilson being at camp, a counselor for cancer kids. I like House's comment to them as well. Here's a clue. If he's lying on the floor, he's not okay." I could definitely Wilson's well-meaning getting the better of him and causing him to trip.

Thanks!

If you can't see your feet and you can't see what's on the floor, it's mighty easy to trip on something. I sort of imagine him stepping onto the can, and it rolling out from beneath his foot, and him falling.

At I first thought Wilson's hand was on House's back :).

That's so sweet, and the camp set-up is totally believable (and so's the fall). Hope the bald kids weren't too scared, and maybe that eventually Wilson's hand can go on House's back, too. Maybe his back is sore from moving candle lanterns :).

I'm sure that just as soon as Wilson feels better his hands will go all sorts of interesting places.

I can see this happening... with or without the lantern. Love cancer camp as the setting. ♥

Speaking as someone who stinks at arts and crafts, the idea of someone being injured doing them had a certain appeal. :)

Oh, this sounds so like them both! I suspect that House must have been assigned to "help" as punishment for some outrage or other he perpetrated at PPTH. Just adding one more child to the bunch that Wilson has to ride herd on!

it does seem likely, doesn't it?

Thank you for coming up with such creative prompts. I'm having a lot of fun.

don't forget tie dyeing t-shirts (and undershirts, tank tops, pillow cases, and anything else that's white or mostly white). I just had a dream about tie dying stuff last night. It was very strange.

ZOMG! I'm such a nerd. I was terrified of camp. I once spent an hour at a day camp crying my eyes out until my parents had to come and get me. And then I begged them (like Wilson going to a hospital) never to send me to sleep-away camp.

And yet I must have been five when I discovered crafts at the summer school across the street from where I lived. It was love at first lanyard.

When I was in 6th grade, we were required to attend a sleepaway 6th-grade camp for the next-to-last week of school. Seniors from the high school were the counselors, with high-school teachers in charge of the camp. I have only two really vivid memories of that camp: one is the poison ivy that grew outside the cabins (to teach the kids to recognize it), and the fact that the 6th-grade boys found they couldn't scare me with the crawfish they caught in the creek -- I thought they were cool (the crawfish, not the boys!), and managed to catch a bigger one than any of the boys could manage. All the other girls screamed and ran away.

Were you allowed to eat the crayfish? It looks delicious. Although I would have dreaded going to a camp with my 7th grade schoolmates, more so with seniors as counselors. I was a nerd and very unpopular. (US 6 = EU 7, since US K = EU 1).

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