Summer camp, elephant showers, and hunger pains (story)

I went to my first (and incidentally, only, considering it was so late) sleepaway camp when I was 16. It was hosted by a university an hour away, and it was for STEM kids.

I was physically nervous upon arrival. I didn't fall asleep my entire first night in the dorm.

That first day, especially, there were just a bunch of kids running around on the grass doing the summer campey, running-around games? I guess you'd call it the cousins of capture the flag, but which are annoying because it's like, ugh, what are the rules for this one? I guess because it was already mid-game I found it not-fun because you're sort of throwing yourself into the fray and you're pretending to chase after the frisbee or whatever that everyone else is chasing after. So that you don't look stupid and also get some exercise. But in truth you have no idea which team you're on or what the hell you're supposed to be doing.

For beautiful tangential context: You know at Disneyland when there's the parade and they want you to get up and clap your hands, and jump, and dance, and chase the confetti, and chase the rubber balls they shoot out of the float? When I was a kid, I just, naw, I never did that. I preferred to just observe. Like I never really understood other kids' and other people's needs to do the novel physical activity. I guess some of that still rings true for me today. I went to Phuket recently and went to visit an elephant sanctuary, and they had this activity for tourists to shower with and wash an elephant. Or like feed an elephant. And just like, I don't have an interest in having the "experience" of brushing the elephant under the shower, or even my hand being the one necessarily giving the banana to the elephant, because someone else is doing it anyway. I can just observe vicariously; like I don't see what's so exciting about "me" or "I" in particular having done the activity. I don't get like what exactly people are trying to "win" or "check off" their bucket list?

Once I got used to it, summer camp became less cringe and the month I spent there still constitutes one of the happiest times of my life thus far. Nonsarcastically. The End.

Honestly, the thing that was more annoying was that I used to have these growth spurts combined with a demanding metabolism (neither of which ultimately yielded an impressive height) where I'd just have to eat so damn much, not because I enjoyed it, but because otherwise I'd be so hungry I wouldn't be able to do anything else or my stomach might even have mild pain. This phenomenon continued all the way through to the end of my first year of college. That's actually how I made a lot of friends during freshman year. I'd have to eat so much food that the first group of friends I was eating with had already finished and left, and so I'd get another helping of food in the dining hall and sit down with a completely new group of strangers in order to have some company. Life hacks? I dunno.