Charlie Stabile

Review of YMCA Camp Thunderbird

This might not be relevant now as it s been nearly...

This might not be relevant now as it s been nearly 20 years since I attended and The staff has changed but it s worth mentioning nonetheless simply because I still remember the experience. I was 11 years old and it was the summer of 1998. My parents sent me here for a week despite my pleading with them not to do so. They told me I would make new friends and have the best time of my life. I definitely remember making one friend and we were pen pals for a while but I can t remember his name. The counselors that ran my group were really nice and treated us well. However, on the very first day, I was walking along with the group touring the place when all off a sudden I turned around and everyone was gone. I wandered around the Camp for almost 2 hours looking either for my group or someone to notice that a child was walking all by himself without any adult supervision and perhaps somebody should do something about it. Never happened. And I walked by a lot of people. I finally found my group and nobody even acknowledged that I was missing. My nerves were so racked that i never once used the bathroom over the course of 5 days. I really wouldn t blame that on anybody but my parents because they forced me to do this. But the worst offense of all? On the last day every kid in the camp along with the counselors prepared to say goodbye to one another through the means of an assembly on the final night. At this assembly, they started playing songs for us to sing along to. One of the songs was the Camp theme song, which I had never heard before this point in time. Since I didn t know the song, I couldn t sing along to it. So I tried to look like I knew what I was doing so that I wouldn t feel left out. One of the counselors from another group was standing behind me and saw that I wasn t singing along to his liking and he slaps in the back of the head to try to get me to sing. It scarred me for years. When I finally got home my mother was all excited to hear how my trip went I just told her it was terrible. When I told her about the counselor who had hit me, she and my dad flipped out and did as much as they could to find the name of the person who hit me but Camp Thunderbird did nothing. This was the worst summer of my life. And considering it was only 5 days, 19 years ago, it has obviously left an impression on me. I m not saying that this is the way the experience would be now. Obviously staff has changed as I am now probably older than any of my counselors were at the time. But, if your child tells you that they really don t want to go, you should listen to them. I m still upset we were never able to find the man that hit me. I can only imagine what he may have done to other kids. That s all l I have to say about Camp Thunderbird.