Scary stories and mystical stories. Why we loved and hated children's camps What you can do at night in the camp

Everyone will agree that some of the most vivid memories of childhood are associated with summer camp.

For some, camp is a morning line-up with formation and raising of the flag, a squad song that will be remembered for a lifetime, an evening bonfire and the “Eaglet Circle”, or maybe waiting for parents on parent’s day. Someone will remember that it was in the camp that he learned to swim or play checkers. For some, camp is the first kiss and slow moments at the disco, tears of parting with new friends and girls’ notebooks covered with wishes.

The kaleidoscope of children's “camp” memories is diverse, but we can say with confidence that everyone remembers the last, longest night - the night before departure, when it is customary to stay up until dawn, say goodbye to friends and certainly make fun of each other. Now no one knows why this night was called “Royal”. But almost all camps honor this tradition.

But the “Royal” night doesn’t end there! Having returned to their rooms or tents after the fire, the guys are in no hurry to go to bed. They communicate and have fun, and the counselors do not interfere with this. The most banal entertainment - smearing sleepy friends with toothpaste is already a thing of the past, but scaring someone by telling a scary story or dressing up as a ghost is quite relevant. In stories about the Royal Night there is a place for tied laces on favorite sneakers, and frogs placed in the beds of girls, and various wardrobe items hung on trees, and many other original pranks.

But, no matter how hard the guys try to have fun, the last night before departure is permeated with the sadness of parting!

At the children's camp "Island of Heroes" the Royal Night takes place in a special way. And all because each shift in this adventure camp is a two-week game according to an exciting scenario, at the end of which the winning team is determined, which in a fair fight has earned the right to go to the Island of Heroes. It is on the “Royal” night that the winners go to the mysterious island.

The “royal” night in each camp is a bright, memorable event filled with a variety of emotions. There is a place for fun and rejoicing, for sadness and disappointment and, of course, for hope, hope that a new summer will come, and friends will meet again at their favorite camp!

August 14th, 2015 , 05:23 pm

"Royal Night" in the (pioneer) camp. This is the last night before departure. None of the adults installed it, but it exists behind the scenes. Sometimes the children themselves ask the counselors: “Will we have a royal night?” What can the counselors do? Take away and hide toothpastes, since on the “royal night” it is customary to smear each other with toothpaste. And this is the most innocent “fun”.

This is reminiscent of a rite of passage in traditional societies.

Teenagers in traditional societies are initiated by spirits. Adult, experienced members of the community only help initiation and create conditions for meeting with spirits. In the children's camp, of course, no one has ever heard of any kind of primitive “initiations,” but, nevertheless, the children themselves, at their own peril and risk, try to create some semblance of initiation. Adults prohibit it, but it’s like “the devils are inciting them.”

It is clear that children do not succeed in anything, and cannot succeed, but what is extremely remarkable is this unconscious attempt to create rite of passage. Actually, all the traditional signs of initiation are present here: a break with parents, a temporary stay in the unknown world of camp life, here the teenager must prove his willpower, not cry, and pass tests. But these tests are “not scary”, and so at the end of the race the children themselves give themselves and each other additional “super tests”. The last night before departure is chosen, of course, because the tests must be “terrible”, maybe even criminal. Well, in the morning we will “go home” and no one will hold us accountable for our crimes: yesterday our parents were not there, and today there are no teachers.

We should not forget that all the “fun” of the “royal night” has a sexual connotation. For the queens spent their nights as they pleased and with whomever they pleased. Of course, all this is more in fantasies and, as a rule, things don’t go further than smearing girls with toothpaste, but erotic arousal does take place, like the night before Ivan Kupala. On the "royal night" some miracles are expected, like the story from the film "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath." Without the expectation of such miracles, there would be no “royal nights”.

ROYAL NIGHT.

A long time ago, when our grandmothers were still playing in sandboxes, in one camp one pioneer somehow displeased another pioneer. The injured party decided to take revenge. And under cover of night, the offended future Komsomol member entered the villain’s room and painted a snowflake on his serenely sleeping face. Toothpaste.
Since then, it has become a good tradition to decorate your camp comrades with a cool and refreshing pores of the face mint substance from a tube. During the daytime, there was generally no hostility between the artists and the victims. Moreover, in everyday life they could be glass-breaking friends. However, at night there were rules. And if you managed to smear your friend so neatly that he didn’t even stir in his sleep, you’re handsome.
For some time, the camp administration tried to fight night arts. They threatened. They even kicked me out of the camp without refunding the cost of the trip. But it’s useless. The children painted other children at night and continued to do so. And then someone smart from the elders suggested streamlining this matter by allowing the pioneers to unofficially make night forays only once per shift.
On the Royal Night.
The night before departure. At Night, when there is nothing left to lose - after all, in the morning everyone will leave for their gray everyday life, and they will no longer be kicked out of the camp.

* * *
Royal Night is the finale of the camp shift. It usually begins with a long disco.
The last “diskach” is like a prom. They are preparing for it. The boys, who spent the entire shift gaining courage for the slower, understood that this was their last chance. The girls, while painting their faces, “spiked” the remaining perfume onto themselves. Even if by the end of the shift the bottles were still full. Such a nuclear smell, of course, made the boys sick. As a result, the level of courage in the blood began to go off scale. And this fact, I believe, brought the pioneers together. With the pioneers.
The DJ at the last disco traditionally cannot cope with the number of orders. The slow ones are pouring in one after another. One is more suffering than the other. The chaste distance between two children dancing in pairs, which usually reaches a meter, is reduced to just fifty centimeters at the latest disco. Almost a full hug, you understand, yes! Shame!
Particularly shy girls from senior squads use the final “disc” as their last chance to join the young leader’s chest. For these purposes, they order a white dance from the DJ, and at the right moment they jump off the benches and run to invite their chosen one. The one who reached the counselor first dances with him.
After the final, most infuriating "slow" - something like the main hit of Whitney Houston or Celine Dion - the children will have a second portion of events.
The second part of the prelude to the Royal Night is the pioneer bonfire.
The day before the event being described, the counselors and teachers of the harsh sex go to the forest for firewood. With axes at the ready and with longing in their chests. For three to five hours they are engaged in gathering, then - carrying and, finally, construction. Obscene language, mass mosquito killings, a bunch of dead nerve cells, poisoning the body with nicotine - and all this in order to pay tribute to tradition. In order for a skewed hut to be erected in a clearing near the camp, which was to disappear in a couple of hours.
After the big disco, the entire population of the camp, under the cover of darkness, in an organized herd, stomps to the hut. The structure, as a rule, already carries gasoline for ten meters - in case it refuses to light up voluntarily, the watchman Uncle Kolya has already soaked it with what it should.
The pioneers form a circle around the fragrant future fire. Irina Palna runs around, driving away those who suddenly decided to become too involved in the pioneer tradition. And only after all safety measures have been observed, the work of the leaders’ hands is set on fire.
Probably, our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers - Komsomol members, patriots and romantics - experienced some sublime emotions looking at the pioneer fire. Maybe they even shed tears - from an overabundance of feelings and the realization that tomorrow everyone would have to go to their apartments. Our children have never experienced anything like this. They strove to quietly throw some larger stone into the fire or crawl closer to the fire, testing the nervous system of the camp administration for resistance.
In my memory, a couple of times Palna came up with the idea for the troops to make some kind of scarecrows from herbs, rags and branches in advance, call them some kind of human defect and conduct an inquisition ritual with them over a fire. A kind of Maslenitsa in the pioneer style. Otherwise, the process of burning wood is unremarkable.
Returning back to the camp, the counselors usually let the children go ahead a little, while they themselves linger for a couple of minutes near the remains of the fire. In order to, paying tribute to ancient traditions, extinguish the pioneer fire “in the pioneer way.” That is, with his pants unbuttoned.
In general, the goal of all long last dance floors and bonfires is the same - so that the pioneers are properly exhausted, tired and fall asleep without the slightest desire to have fun at night. This is what usually happens with most children: after a disco and a bonfire, they have just enough battery charge left to crawl to the room, take off their clothes and collapse on the bed.
They are the ones who become victims of those who have a more powerful battery in the anus.
These same “powerful batteries” wait for the even sniffing of their brothers, and then, as in the game “Mafia,” they raise their heads, meet each other’s gazes, and, winking and giggling, begin their dirty deeds.
Like any serious matter, transforming a friend with paste is divided into levels of difficulty.
Level one – color your bedmate.
Level two is to harass someone from the next ward.
And finally, the third “level” is to paint someone from another residential building with paste.
There is, however, also a fourth level, but only a few reach it. This level involves unnoticed penetration into the counselor's room and transformation of the sleeping counselor's physiognomy.
As a rule, average children do not rise beyond the third level, so they draw at night only on their own kind.
It happens that during painting the victim wakes up. It hurts. Moreover, to both sides. In this case, the half-painted pioneer, after some considerations, usually joins the society of Itinerant artists and goes to smear those who are in a state of sleep.
In the old action movies starring Schwartz and Vandamme, the tough guys work alone. Royal Night is not an action movie. Working for one is not the least bit interesting. Therefore, pioneers often look for accomplices in their work the day before. They confer and discuss who they will be friends with. There is a legend that once a ward of eleven boys agreed to anoint the twelfth at night. But the boys somehow miscalculated their strength and could not wake up at the appointed time to commit evil. But that same twelfth woke up. And he painted all the sleeping conspirators in one mask.
Here's a riddle for you, dear reader of my works. How can you make sure that in the morning your comrades don’t realize that it was you who anointed them?
Right! You need to anoint yourself too! And in the morning, put on an innocent face and be indignant louder than anyone else. “Idiocy!”, you say. That's right. There is little. But you have an alibi!
However, the Night that is called Royal is not remarkable for its pasta alone. There are other, albeit less popular, entertainments.
One of these is moving the bed with a sleeping fellow somewhere into the corridor. This is a sweet and harmless, essentially, joke. In the morning the little man wakes up and at first cannot understand where he is. Then he takes a deep breath and rushes alone from his bed back to the room.
There is another entertainment - sewing a sleeping pioneer to the bed. I mean, with threads. In the sense of a blanket for a mattress. As a result, the little man finds himself walled up like a butterfly in a cocoon. Attempts to roll over on the other side in sleep are unsuccessful. In this case, the victim, as a rule, wakes up and begins to scream wildly. By the way, a particularly nervous child can wake up up to forty people with one cry.
The Royal Night ends with the “morning of the Streltsy execution.” By the time the detachment’s administration, in the form of a teacher and a counselor, wakes up, the children have already managed to wash the paste off their faces and hair, and pick it out of their ears. A fair teacher tries to find the perpetrators of the crime, while an unfair teacher punishes the entire group. The punishments, however, are completely harmless - to wash the surrounding world of pasta and other substances: doors, bedside tables, beds, door handles and floors.
And only after this the children are allowed to proceed with their bag to the bus that will take you home.

* * *
Together with the Royal Night, the camp shift ends. And with it comes summer.
And if, my friend, you are not yet sixteen years old, then in a year you will have every chance to return to the wonderful world called “camp”. But if you are already too old to relax in the detachment, then there are practically no options to get here again.
Although – I’m lying. There is still one option.
Become a counselor yourself.

AFTERWORD.

The camp is completely filled with stories.
I never talked about much of what happened to us.
For example, about how we received a warning about drinking alcohol on payday. And the alcohol had already been purchased. And how Mikhalych had to break a liter of Belenkaya. Shattered.
Or about how the same Mikhalych rode the girls from his squad on the “Romashka” carousel until they were extremely blue. And then the girls lay in the grass and could not move.
I didn’t talk about how Dimon told the little children that Vovchik had a lot of sweets, and how after that the children in a large herd ran after Volodya across the football field, demanding sweets.
Many stories are still patiently waiting to be told.

* * *
About ten years have passed since the events described above.
Outside my office window is the third of July 2015, Friday.
Friday. Accordingly, tomorrow a new camp shift begins at the Rainbow camp. The children will come. They will be met by teachers and counselors.
This means that the history of our camp continues.
Well, isn't it great, huh?!
Smiley.

The last day of camp life. The Mayak children's labor camp says goodbye to another shift. A month of living in a collective farm barracks with clay floors came to an end. Children run amok. There are hated pillows with bedbugs lying everywhere; girls jump on the springs of assembled beds, crushing ripe Don watermelons rolled up there; To the next bed, my girlfriends and I chained Natasha’s bra, whom we didn’t like the whole shift, with a barn lock. All twenty-one people who lived in our sixth ward paint each other with ballpoint pens: arms, legs, backs, bellies, necks, cheeks...Phrases like: “Did you think you were in a fairy tale?”, “Don’t piss, we’ll break through!” ", "Honduras", "It's time to go home!", as well as telephone numbers, names, addresses, so that we can find each other later.
I'm packing my things. I have a good place, by the window, with a view of the Don steppe, or rather, first of the toilet, then of the steppe. Suddenly the concrete wall of this very toilet shuddered as if from a strong shock and, quickly cracking along its entire length, began to collapse. "Wow! - I thought.” The wall collapsed, revealing a row of stinking holes in the concrete floor. “Cool, well done, boys!” The toilet was completely unbearable, these huge holes, infested with maggots, frightened me with the real possibility of falling into them, and for some reason brought up thoughts of the afterlife. With a friendly squeal, the girls and I approved of the boys' prank. Although they, of course, suffered a lot later for this crime.
The last day was a success. Then there was a disco. This time almost no one got drunk, and Lenka and I didn’t have to gather our fellow soldiers from the bushes before lights out. Instead, all the girls gathered in the ward, trainees from the senior shift came to us and very sincerely explained that today was a royal night. Anything is possible this night. But not to us, but with us. Usually local village boys know about her and try to get in on the girls, and if they are lucky, they will drag someone away. Then, however, they will most likely return it.
But we weren’t so much concerned about whether we would be returned or not, we became incredibly scared that we might be dragged away. And somehow the counselors made it clear that from today they are no longer responsible for us.
In general, we - twenty and one more frightened goats - began to frantically move the beds, prop up the door with a mop, table, and chairs. A bucket was placed in the passage for needs. Several people whose beds stood near the windows began to beg the others to switch with them. And me too.
It was a fun night. Of course, they tried to climb into the windows. We screamed and ran around the ward. The counselors came to the screams and got bogged down in our barricades, after some time silence was restored and then, in the middle of this silence, the cheerful ringing of a stream against a bucket began to be heard, and then everyone began to laugh deafeningly.
Royal night!

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Penultimate day at camp

• Climb
• Life according to a schedule (cleaning, washing, etc.)
• Everything is as usual, you go for breakfast, then free time (activities, games), swimming, etc.
• Quiet hour
• During quiet times, you can arrange to collect your things. It’s quiet and calm, everyone in the wards packs up their bags and leaves only personal hygiene products and clothes for going home and to the disco.
• Afternoon snack
• Leader concert (Vozhatsky concert - The closing of each camp shift is a concert at which the spectators are children, and their leaders perform in front.) The leader concert is certainly a very important part of your camp life, therefore, try to come up with a concept as early as possible, and rehearse well. Also, at the counselor’s concert, various awards are given to children for their successes).
• After the counselor's concert, dinner
• Farewell bonfire

Farewell bonfire Could be:

1. Detachment
2. General camp

Before going to the fire, children should be clearly outlined the rules of behavior in nature. You must watch how they are dressed. And how they behave.

Namely:

• When going to the forest, you need to take a spray with you against mosquitoes, ticks and other creatures (after spraying it or applying it according to the instructions)
• If you have small children, monitor the process of using such drugs
• Spray only on the street, it is contraindicated in the building!
• Wear closed shoes
• Long pants
• Long sleeve sweatshirts
• Headdress!
• If there is no weather, but a fire is still planned, take umbrellas and raincoats with you
• Make sure that all children are dressed according to the rules.

Bring bread, potatoes, and salt to the fire from the dining room. Definitely water. Find a guitarist in the camp, of course, if you are not a guitarist yourself, and quickly recruit him.

Pick up a couple of outdoor games, take sports equipment, and enjoy a wonderful vacation!

• After the fire everyone runs to change into the building
• Farewell disco
• The end time is set by the camp administration.
• Lights out (Royal night)

One of the traditions of almost all children's camps is the royal night. This is the last night before departure. On the royal night, it is customary to smear each other with toothpaste. To avoid the royal night, many counselors take away toothpastes from their pioneers. But some pioneers, who are going to camp more than once, take 2-3 tubes of toothpaste with them.

Royal Night is not only a time of entertainment for the children, but also for the counselors. You can have fun and make fun of the children while they sleep (in a good way).

Remember that many children have terrible allergies to pastes and creams. There is no need to spoil other people's things, do all sorts of nonsense, yell and violate children's routine. Remember you must bring them joy! If you want to live in peace, then don’t do a royal night. Go to bed peacefully. Remember that a very difficult day awaits you in the morning, you need to get enough sleep.