The Other Camp Songs Thing
I do much better with the other camp songs. For one thing, nobody cries during Little Bunny Foo Foo. Actually, the first time I heard this song I wanted to cry. I felt bad for the little field mice who kept getting conked on the head.
One thing that is really funny about this song is that when the campers get to the part where they are supposed to say, "But the next day, in the forest………………" the counselors make them yell it really loudly as if yelling would make Little Bunny Foo Foo learn his lesson. It never does.
What was the point to the moral of the story? The kids don’t know what it means. I was in junior high before it dawned on me that ‘Hare today, goon tomorrow’ meant something more than Foo Foo was a rabbit in one verse and a goon in the next. Maybe I was just a dumb camper.
The Camp Michigamme song is great. It goes like this:
Michigamme, oh my Michigamme, beautiful retreat
Where the leaders of the largest district of all Methodism meet.
Here we gather every happy summer for our worship, work, and play.
Here we dedicate our lives in service to a needy world today.
When I was a camper, there was a different version of this song that circulated camp every year:
Michigamme, oh I miss my mommy, and my daddy too.
If I have to stay at this camp any longer, I will puke on you.
I have no idea who made this up or why. We all sang it, but nobody didn’t like camp. The smart aleck who ripped on the camp song didn’t even bother to finish it. Two lines. Ooh. You’re talented, so funny. You should work for Saturday Night Live! Little kids can be so silly.
I don’t understand one song at camp. I don’t know what it’s called. It’s the one about that rabbit who almost gets shot by a hunter but runs into someone’s house and hides. Now everybody knows the end of the song:
Little rabbit come inside, safely to abide.
That’s because you get to sing this part over and over until the very end when you are humming all the verses. Frankly, I don’t know how the song starts, because by the time I realize that it’s this song, the one time you sing the first line is over and it is hummed the rest of the song. All I know is that it is something about a window. I think the person in the house is looking out the window and sees the hunter hunting the rabbit.
Who in the U.P. hunts rabbits? It should be "Little deer come inside safely to abide." I bet a Yooper didn’t make this song up.
We found a great use for Singing In The Rain at our church. Our new pastor’s first Sunday sermon was on camp Sunday in the early summer when we attempted to get the kids pumped up for Michigamme.
The Sunday School song leader (thankfully, Nancy doesn’t tell the kids to spring a leak when they are noisy) invited the kids’ dads (I think it was Father’s Day also) and shy, timid, new Pastor Bill up in front of the entire church to sing and do the motions with the kids.
Well, Pastor Bill didn’t know what to do. Here the kids were with a very funny kid named Brad in the lead doing an impression of his over enthusiastic counselor Joe leading Singing In The Rain, and everyone was watching Pastor Bill. He did very well the first few stanzas, but when he had to stick his tongue out, tip his head back, and sing in front of his new congregation---that’s when it all went downhill.
We didn’t have camp Sunday this year. I don’t know why.