My First Mission (aka Stupid and Wrong Things about my Summer Camp Experience)

Picture me, as a 9 year old going to a summer camp in my hometown. I don't recall how I felt, even so, I struggled to verbalize my feelings so I used a meme sheet with ragecomic faces as an AAC device for emotions. Convenient at the time, since it was 2011 - before the Internet shifted into its dystopian, chaotic, dead space form it is now.

I was not prepared for the level of sheer kindergarten politics and stupidity that I would witness.

Firstly there was every year an "enemy" dressed as a sort of mascot, which changed each year. It represented the villain in a fascinating game of "catch the enemy". All summer long the children would be radicalized against this fake enemy even if they knew it was a game. Think about it. Children under 13 were brainwashed and groomed, trained military style by influence from young adults on becoming hateful little venomous proxies, enabling an unreality of spite and division.

I did cry because I was so affected by the division and the matrix rivalry that I couldn't stand it. I broke. 

Even if I knew it was a game, the energy was excessively low. Things like this kept the 3D false matrix alive.

I broke the game at the finale of one of the summers I attended this camp. I did a fake private therapy session with the evil monkey man, then gave a 30-second speech about acceptance and love in front of the agora on the last day. Everyone except the boy with Down's syndrome was speechless. Oh boy, I did something both quite right, and immensely wrong, because I promoted sympathizing with a pretend sociopath. The camp staff cheered on me, the evil monkey man thanked me for "saving" him. I cringe at how I should have just done it differently instead.

My 10 year old self should have just screamed at everyone that they have been brainwashed and pitted against each other in a completely rigged, unfair game.

And (trigger warning: SA) perhaps one of the most concerning things I saw at this camp was, having pre-pubescent children participate in a "ghost massage" game. Basically, it's a game where people lay down, face down on the ground, have someone rub their back, and then the people who were laying down must figure out who rubbed their backs (child-on-child). It's such an elevated risk for sexual abuse, I can't even.

This whole camp was almost like a cult. Questionable touchy-groomy practices, an object of demonization, supply, and dictatorship.