Wet Hot American Summer didn’t do well at the box office in 2001. It grossed $292,000 off a $5 million budget; that’s legit bust territory. But the movie also tapped into an experience people could relate to, and it’s since become a cult classic.
Today, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp launches on Netflix, brimming with cameos and returning cast members (many of whom have evolved into A-list movie stars). If the teasers are any indication, the show will be loaded with moments that feel both wildly absurd and vaguely familiar… as if we cringed through them ourselves.
In honor of the release, we asked Uproxx writers to spill their camp stories; the funny, the strange, and the embarrassing. We invite you to share your own in the comments!
Ashley Burns
Around the time that I was 9 or 10, I spent two weeks in consecutive summers at the “Life for Youth Ranch Camp” in Vero Beach, Florida. That’s a pretty serious bible camp, in case you’ve never heard of it, and just about everything we did there was overseen by the Man Upstairs. Taking a paddle boat out on the lake? Jesus will be with you. Strolling through the forest to study nature? Jesus will be with you. Sleeping in a cabin with 10 other boys and sharing just one toilet? Jesus won’t be with you, because even at that age, I knew that part of it was hell. But I was super into Bible camp those two summers, and while I was a nobody the first year, I came back and won Camper of the Week the second year.
The coolest part of it all was when our cabin put together our very own original musical performance to show our love for God. We had the coolest counselor, too, because while all the counselors listened to Christian music, he had every Stryper album on cassette. So, we created this interpretive performance set to Stryper’s “In God We Trust,” and I got to play God. I know, it was so rad (and perhaps blasphemous), but when we decided to use a palm branch for a sword and the kid in front of me thrust it into the sky at the song’s finale, he stabbed me in the face, about an inch below my right eye. That summer was the last time I ever played God.
Dan Seitz
When I was in middle school, I was packed off to 4H camp. It was a pretty typical camp in the middle of the forest, and we trudged out into the woods to do camp things.
As we were walking back in a orderly line one day, I noticed something weird. Each kid would get to the camp building clearing and jump. Some of them were screaming, limping around. By the time I realized that I was part of 20 kids stomping on a hornet’s nest that had fallen on the trail? Too late. I got stung three times, and I got off lucky.
Jameson Brown
I was at freshman football camp. Along with shaving my head, I was forced to attempt the “milk-gallon challenge.” Oh, don’t know what that is, do you? Well, it’s trying to fit a gallon of whole milk in your belly within an hour. Guess what? It doesn’t work. Let’s just say I pulled a magic trick and made the milk reappear. Enjoy your day.
Pete Blackburn
I went to summer camp when I was 8 or 9 years old. While there, I tried to impress a girl who I had a crush on. This obviously meant putting my elite jungle gym skills on display so she would have no other choice but to go to first base with me… but my plan didn’t work out so well. My go-to move was always on the glider, where I’d push the handle out a few feet on the track, launch myself off the platform and catch the handle as I sped down the length of the track to the other platform like a goddamn action hero.
Unfortunately, I pushed the handle a little farther out than usual, leading to me coming up just a bit short. I got a few fingertips on the handle but slipped and went crashing to the mulch below, where I snapped my wrist and had to go to the hospital. More importantly, I failed to impress my crush, who apparently didn’t dig un-athletic weeping boys with one and a half wrists.
Steve Bramucci
In the summer before seventh grade, my friends and I shipped off for a week at Camp Howard, near Mount Hood (Oregon). That year, I decided I wanted to become the camp’s “Prank King” — that was goal No. 1. Goal No. 2 was to get the phone number of my summer crush (I always went to camp sure there would be a girl I liked and hadn’t been wrong yet).
On the first day of camp, I fell madly in love with a counselor-in-training (CIT), probably 15 years old, making her three years older than me. I specifically remember that her hair reminded me of the Noxzema Girl. I decided that I would prank her cabin, she would fall for my mischievous charm, and I would become a camp legend by scoring an older girlfriend.
After a few days of laying low, I convinced my friend Eric to start a prank war with the CIT’s cabin. We led off by putting a bunch of chairs in front of their door, to block them in. This was idiotic, because the girls were all off at dinner, which is where we were supposed to be. So, all they had to do to get back in the cabin was push the chairs aside. Still, led by their CIT, the girls played along. They snuck into our cabin and stole all of our pillows.
The prank war was on! My fantasy was coming true! The CIT was probably already writing our names side-by-side in her Trapper Keeper!
Then, I overreached. Eric and I hung back from dinner the next night and cleared out the entire girls’ cabin. Mattresses, bags, pillows, clothes, wall posters. We took it all and dragged it off into a clearing in the forest about 30 feet away. Then, exhausted, we met up with our own cabin in time for the nightly campfire. Before the camp director had finished singing “Cat’s in the Cradle,” the rain started. It was a full-on Oregon summer downpour. As we rushed back to our cabin, shielding our heads from the pelting rain, Eric and I realized that the girls’ stuff was getting soaked.
The girls got angry. The counselors got angrier. The camp director was called, and Eric and I were pariahs for the rest of the week. I did not, it’s worth mentioning, get the phone number of the CIT with the Noxzema Girl hair.
So, between milk chugs and broken wrists, we’ve had some pretty strange camp experiences. Now, what’s your most bizarre/embarrassing camp story?
