Teen Diaries |The Camp Blue Bay Diary Entries of 1985

Take note of my lovely ET sheets. I still have them.

Upon visiting my mom, I stumbled upon a red journal filled with entries from my week at Girl Scout sleepaway summer camp in East Hampton's Camp Blue Bay.

Summer of 1985 I was 12.5 years old. I loved The Goonies, Cyndi Lauper, makeup, gummy bracelets, friendship pins and Huey Lewis & The News.  Looking back, summer sleepaway camp sort of prepped us for college dorm life. I love how I documented everything I ate! Such a chubber!  I'll admit, these diaries are queer and boring. My comments are in parentheses.

FIRST DAY!  Tuesday, August 13, 1985
Today I re-met Nikki from last year. I met two new really nice girls, Lisa and Diana. I just set everything up, it looks neat. I wrote 2 letters so far. One to my friend Serena and another to Mom. I took the swim test. I ate a mayo and lettuce sandwich for lunch (ew?) OK, time for dinner.

I'm back and ready to write. I'm also alone. I have bad windburn on my cheeks. It's now 8pm and getting dark. I wonder where everyone is. I mailed my letters. The other girls are starting a camp fire. I'm gonna write Danny a letter (Danny was my platonic male best friend). 


It's now 9:21pm and we made smores. Dee is reading her bible and I'm laying on my bed holding a flashlight. I love Sean Astin. Good night.

Posing in front of our "lean-to" showing off my Tommy Howell pin-up.

Wednesday August 14,1985
So far I ate bread and butter for breakfast. We went on the BMX bike trail. It sort of stinks. My hair is very wet. I put my head under the hose. It's break time now. 


Tommy Howell is hanging on the post in our tent. He's not that bad, kind of cute. I wish I didn't have to go swimming. I hate the gross rocks and smelly salt water. I'm hungry. I hope we have a good lunch. I skipped two meals so far because I didn't like the menu choices. I can't wait to go home and swim in our pool. Summer's almost over, only two more weeks to go. I'm so depressed. I wanna go home so bad. (This is funny, I thought I loved camp!)


I love Sean Astin.

Nikki really hates me, but that's okay because I hate her more.  I might move in with Kristen, Athena and Nicole. I can't stand it here in the tent with Nikki and Dee. They're always fighting with me. I'm friends with everyone at camp except Nikki and Dee. Lisa is nice though.


For lunch I ate 2 tacos. I found out I can't move in with my pals in Tent 6. Nikki and I are trying to get along now. We all had a water fight before, it was fun. I bought a really gnarly tote bag (ha ha, gnarly!) and Collette, a counselor from Belgium thought my name began with an "E" and wrote "Ellyson" on my bag. I don't really care though. 


Tabatha and Laura are fighting. I'm sitting in the kitchen, it's 8:24. I'm dying to go home. I hate bugs so bad, especially Daddy Long Legs. (I still hate bugs!)

Thursday August 15, 1985
I ate 2 boxes of Sugar Pops (remember when they weren't called "Corn Pops"!) for breakfast. Nikki's singing and we're alone in the tent. I can't wait to go home! I'm not having as much fun as last year. A lot of the kids are flaky this year. I'm very hot and tired and wish I didn't have to go boating. (I was never an outdoorsy person, I forgot even as a kid I hated doing things outdoors!)


It's break now. We had to clean the bathrooms. We ate pizza bagels for lunch. We played line basketball and killer for 2 hours. I went rowing for a while. I hate swimming. I don't like Andi that much and don't think she should be a counselor, she's not that nice. I can't wait to go home tomorrow! We have lazy day, we get to sleep til 9am! I love Sean Astin. I miss Mom. I wrote Mom, Joe (brother), Serena and Danny. They made us write to our family again today. 


We had a big talent show.  I wanted to do a lip sync. We looked so dumb. I ate potatoes for supper.

Stay tuned for Part II of the exiting and dramatic Camp Diaries. Did you go to camp? Did you keep a diary while at camp?

I Swear, There Were Boys At My Girl Scout Camp!

As we do every day, today at lunch, we set a few minutes aside for one of my many childhood stories – my coworkers do so enjoy these wild tales. Obviously you do too, you come back and check this ridiculous blog weekly based on the info the good folks at Google are providing me with…

So, today’s tale caused a bit of a stir and has left me confused, torn and downright conflicted. My mind is oozing with self-doubt and a slew of unanswered questions. I can’t help but wonder if I’ve imagined this entire situation. I need answers and I better freakin’ get some soon!

For those of you who once subscribed to my MySpace Blog, forgive me if you’re heard this before, but here’s the deal …

In the summers of 1984 and 1985, I attended Camp Blue Bay in East Hampton. This was a Girl Scout camp. I wasn’t a real Girl Scout, but that’s OK, it just meant that my folks simply had to lay out a few extra bucks to unload me for a one week interval.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Camp Blue Bay, aside from having to swim in non-pool waters and sleeping fully clothed under my ET blanket, clutching a flashlight. I was afraid of bears attacking us and the thought of running in my nightgown and bare feet through the beach woods terrified me even more. The cure for this was sleeping in my clothes with sneakers on. In retrospect that’s humorous. Imagine bears on the beach?

Reminiscing about my two fun-filled summers at Camp Blue Bay brought back memories of a young romantic interlude I encountered with a boy named Matt. Matt was from Queens and he was about a year older but looked very young. I think I found out later he had a hormone problem them kept him on the short side and very youthful looking.

My coworkers joked that he was probably like a 40-year-old Joe Peschi look-alike groundskeeper. As if I’d mistake that for a cute young boy. Whatever! They looked at me in disbelief and questioned the entire story as if I would lie about something that retarded. So here I sit in a state of confusion. It’s so unnerving wondering why this kid was at my camp. I actually emailed someone who handles email inquiries regarding Camp Blue Bay and if she doesn’t reply, I will contact them on Facebook – yes, I’m a member of their club.

So yes, why was there a boy at a camp for girls? Why? What was he doing there? Was he someone’s kid? We kissed behind a bush! Would my parents like the idea knowing that they sent their little girl to what was supposed to be a safe all-girl summer camp, only to get mixed up with some dirty boy from Queens? Hot summer lovin’ is going on miles away from my safe, uneventful Nassau County home. Here I am out in the Hamptons making out with some dude? How did this happen? Who let him in to kiss innocent 11-year-old girls?!

Apparently the program I was part of included grades 5-8. Now, honestly, if you ask me there’s a big difference between a fifth grader and an eighth grader. I mean really! Grade 8 is like junior high maturity! Those chicks didn’t care that Kirk Cameron was on the cover of Tiger Beat. They were on to the real deal. We’re talking girls in leather jackets with big hair who smoked CIGARETTES in the bathroom at school!

Which reminds me, I recall two broads lighting up a cig and breakin’ out a bottle of wine during “rest time” back behind the lean-to. Being a good Catholic school girl, I rallied my buddies and we rushed off to have a heart-to-heart with one of the CITs (that’s “Counselor in Training” for all you non-campers) and reported those dirty girls. We didn’t have to worry about them beating us up either – they were quickly whisked back to Commack or wherever they were from.

Man, camp was awesome. What a way to break up the monotony of watching reruns of The Partridge Family and riding bikes to that candy store on Meacham Avenue to play hours of Pac Man.