It’s hard to beat a weekend with Dance Thru the Decades, Campfire, and a carnival. The past couple of days here at CTT have been chock full of fun and entertainment.
Friday night was Dance Thru the Decades night where each cabin received a decade and genre and had to come up with a skit for it. Cabin B had the 1980s and told a beautiful story about marriage, to Lionel Ritchie’s “Endless Love” with Lucie Pasquier and Emily Smith as the couple. Using the 1970s, Cabin 3 had one of the most interesting skits performing The Who’s rock opera Tommy with Brett Richardson as the title character and Laz Friedberg as Tommy’s mom. Igloo 9 (Cabin 4) had modern dance music and did techno aerobics to “Call on Me” with Ethan Weinstein as the aerobics instructor. Cabin F had the 2000s and told the story of one of their campers, Maddie St. Aubin, and her love interest played by Julia Stern using the songs “The Time” by Black Eyed Peas and “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé and Jay-Z. All of these skits were entertaining and demonstrated each cabin’s dancing abilities, but there could only be one winner, and they deserved it.
When I saw The Dark Knight Rises, I thought that there could be nothing in 2012 that could top that. I was sadly mistaken as the skit Boys Tents performed was one of the funniest and greatest things I have seen in almost a decade at CTT and eighteen years of existence on Earth. Their decade was the 1950s and the skit started with Jack “Vito” Parr lip-syncing “Day-O” by Harry Belafonte, and Ian Patton and their counselor Sam held a sheet in front of the stage. When the line “Daylight come and me wan’ gon home” appeared, Justin Fribush and Aaron Morris arose from the sheet and mouthed the line and would proceed to go back under the sheet until the line “come, mister tally man, tally me banana” would be sung and they would lift up bananas. Riley St. Aubin was the conductor of the group and made sure bananas would appear on cue and send out Pol Casamada when a tarantula would be mentioned. Maybe it was one of those ‘you had to be there’ skits, but it was certainly a treat.
Just as everyone was ready to go back to their cabins and tents, ghosts invaded the gym and took everyone to Ghost Court! Ghost Court is when campers are charged with ‘crimes’ that they have committed against Camp Tall Timbers and are given ‘punishments’. Cabin F was charged with being afraid of bugs and in turn, had to read reasons why bugs are good for the planet. Ethan Weinstein loves fishing too much and had to carry a fishing pole around the whole day. Carl Lasker and Josh Arnold spider web the cabin too much (it is when they take yarn or dental floss and tie it around objects in the cabin making a ropes course spider web) so they had to be tied together for free swims, which did not affect them much as they are together all the time as it is. Cabin G, Pol Casamada, Riley St. Aubin, and Justin Fribush were charged with being in their cabin or tent too much so in turn, they had to broadcast where they were going every time they moved during free swim. Jacob Sanders, Leonard Pasquier, and Grayson St. Aubin were charged with playing their Nintendo DS far too much so they had to dress like a Pokémon and act like one during lunch. Cabin B collected too many animals as pets for their cabin so they had to act like frogs during second free swim. Cabin 8 never went to bed on time causing them to carry their pillows and blankets around during free swims. Lastly, Nora Seigle, a ghost, received far too much mail throughout the session so she dressed like a mailbox during meals and sung the mail song from Blue’s Clues when she received mail.
After that incredible, day, we had a late wakeup and friendship-themed services where Cabin F read a beautiful poem they all wrote about each other and their friends at CTT. Justin and Spencer Leibow reprised their presentation on family, but replaced the word “family” with “friendship” and Carl Lasker and Josh Arnold, using their Ghost Court punishment, did a poem on how, like spiders, they are very close friends.
Following services, we had a whole-camp pool party in preparation for the carnival. The carnival was a grand spectacle on the lower fields with a whale that shot water, a football tossing competition, a baseball game where you had to time when to swing exactly, tossing balls into a bucket or at cans, a hula hoop game, a face painting station, the traditional carnival game where you swing a hammer and try to hit the bell, a moon bounce with a climbing wall, and the triumphant return of the CTT slip ‘n’ slide! In addition to those activities, campers won tickets from some games where they could get prizes like glowstick straws, candy, plastic flutes, and more. That night, we had a campfire where we heard the story of Billy Mathis, the ‘founder’ of camp, performed skits, and sang songs before ending the fun-filled day with s’mores.
Today, we have the CTT Darft (intentionally misspelled) which is when the camp drafts players for the CTT Fantasy Football league and tomorrow, we take a trip to the amusement park!