Hey, Fools!

…APRIL Fools, that is. And who hasn’t been fooled good at some point or another? We all know WE have at Everything Summer Camp—and I mean, literally, HERE at Everything Summer Camp. With a number of pranksters in the office and an even greater number of those seeking revenge, April Firsts around here seem to escalate every year. Allow me to walk you down a few blocks of memory lane…

For some people, pranks are just part of their personality. For them, it is a must-scratch itch—an unrelenting urge that courses through them like the blood through their veins.

Enter: Matthew Stephen DeMuth—Sales Manager and natural born-prankster.

Looking to cause some fuss one spring, Matt downloaded a Prank Dialer app for his phone. Using this app, Matt was able to make it appear as though people from his phone’s list of Contacts were calling one another. He had Sara call Mark and Mark call Ed, then Ed call Ryan and Ryan call…well, you get the picture.

This prank spanned quite a bit longer than just April First. Matt even went through the trouble of including himself in the prank dials to elude suspicion.

But, despite his efforts, being the desperate pranker that he is, people started to suspect Matt anyway which forced him to take it even further. Having wisely excluded Brian from any of the prank calls, Matt was in a position to frame the mild-mannered Operations Manager. Unfortunately for Matt, nobody bought it.

And, double-unfortunately for Matt, people hadn’t forgotten about his tricks one year later. Taking a note from the office pranks between Jim and Dwight in the hit show, ‘The Office’, Mark and Sara worked together to obtain Matt’s phone and toss it above the ceiling tiles. Then, as Jim did in the show, Mark and Sara proceeded to call Matt’s phone…frequently, which surely drove the much-deserving DeMuth quite crazy.

In other years, Ed—the president of Everything Summer Camp—has dirtied his hands with the best of them in April Fools past. In fact, he’s become rather notorious around the office, actually, for his diabolical pranks and clever deceit. Several years before Matt pulled one over on everyone with his Prank Dialer app, Ed got everybody all at once as well.

Having installed fake security cameras in the break room, Ed created a cacophonous rise out of everybody at lunchtime when they saw the cameras and expressed their unfavorable opinions. The prank was pretty much forced to be revealed very quickly before a mob started.

Ed topped himself in a following year when he disclosed to everybody that the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) released a new law concerning proximity safety. He then explained that OSHA deems our trunk factory to operate too close to the adjoining offices and all office employees must now wear mandatory safety goggles.

You can imagine how stupid everybody with a desk job felt, wearing safety goggles at the computer and taking customer phone calls. Eventually, Ed couldn’t keep it together and put an end to his own prank.

So, as you can see, with our track record around THIS office, today is a day to watch our backs and tread lightly. I recommend the same approach for all of you living or working with prank-prone people. And, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Summer Campers!

Did you know that the world is chock-full of former summer campers? They’re all over the place. Some are even famous celebrities now. They’re in the movies we see, in professional sports leagues, and on the radio. And speaking of radio, did you know that Howard Stern of ‘The Howard Stern Show’ was once a summer camper like yourselves? It’s true. Growing up in New York City, he spent many a summer at Camp Wel-Met.

Though it’s no longer in operation, Camp Wel-Met was the place where summer memories were born! The campgrounds were situated in wooded areas of Narrowsburg, New York. Despite the camp’s lack of funds, facilities, and equipment—they were rich with the prerogative to create fun, no matter what materials were at their disposal.

It was so much fun, in fact, that Howard kept going back not just as a camper, but as a worker in the kitchen as well as taking on cabin leader responsibilities. He’s said of his time at Camp Wel-Met that it was “The greatest experience”. From a very young age—before his days at Wel-Met even—Howard was always drawn to the performing arts.

He was enrolled in piano lessons for five years and he had developed a love for putting on amusing shows for his friends using marionettes. He was only five years old by when he discovered his desire to be on the radio. When the desire hadn’t faded five years down the road, his dad gave him a tape recorder for his birthday.

After graduating from Washington-Rose Elementary School, followed by Roosevelt High School, Howard went on to study for four years at Boston University. It didn’t take long for him to start work at WTBU—Boston U’s campus radio station. As radio host, he would play music, read news, and hold interviews for campus entertainment and education.

After his college graduation, Howard quickly found work, but declined an offer from WRNW, a progressive rock station in New York. “I freaked out,” Howard has since explained. “I got real nervous that I wasn’t good enough.” But it didn’t take him long to snap out of it. “All of a sudden…I realized I had turned down a job in radio,” he said. His mother and girlfriend gave him helpful encouragement to contact the station again and work things out.

That’s just what he did. Howard went on to establish his career and made a name for himself as a radio show personality and eventually created ‘The Howard Stern Show’—his long-running show on the air which gained great popularity from the mid-80’s to the early 2000’s.

Howard took what he found fun and formed it into his career. You’re sure to find fun at summer camp. What will you do with it? As always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey there, Camp Fans!

Veteran campers know how essential it is to have their laundry bag for a convenient and clean summer camp stay. Whether it’s just a single week stay or you’re gone for a whole month, we’ve got a wonderful variety of bags that are sure to meet your needs for your camp stay. As well as adding new laundry bags, we’ve also added new, fold-up hampers to our Laundry Bag lineup since last year.

Our Laundry Bag selection for this camp season provides a plethora of fabrics, styles, and brand names like Mint, Trendy Collections, Buckhead Betties, Three Cheers, and more! A bag’s unique design and color can help identify your bag, making things easy and convenient on you along with the laundry service at your kid’s camp.

Whether the Laundry Bag that you keep your dirty camp clothes in has a cute style or it’s highly practical—or if it isn’t a laundry bag at all but one of our incredibly handy, catch-all hampers—it’s sure, not only to please your camper, but your camp as well. A quality laundry bag is a winning situation for everybody.

The 2016 Laundry Bag line-up at Everything Summer Camp boasts bags that feature mesh fabric for a speedier dry time, bags that are embroidered with your camper’s name, bags that display cute designs or funny notes like ‘Dirty Stuff’ or ‘I think I’ll just be happy today’…. The list goes on. With so many options, it’s easy to find the top choice for you.

Constructed of stitched nylon as well as some cotton varieties, these Laundry Bags of our department in 2016 are durable, reliable, and spacious. Pick out your favorite for absolute laundry convenience at summer camp. We hope you enjoy browsing the selection we’ve compiled and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Seekers!

Throughout March, I’ve been posting a series on Mondays about how to ‘Choose the Right Camp’ for your soon-to-be-camper. Today is the last post in the series. I’ve been spilling constructive tips and advice from Dr. Chris Thurber and Dr. Jon Malinowski’s awesome guidebook, ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’ all week and today I’m giving you one last juicy morsel of great advice on the subject of finding the right camp. We’ve talked about ‘Where do you want to go to camp?’, ‘How long do you want to stay at camp?’, and, last week, we asked ‘Do you want a single-sex or coed camp?’ Today’s question:

WHAT KIND OF ORGANIZATION DO YOU WANT?

You want to know what kind of setup a camp has. The two major components to focus on with this question would be the camp’s living quarters as well as the activities they offer. All camps have different types of organizational structure. Some take in 90 campers for their summer sessions while others might take in 400. Some camps have a full day prepared for their campers while other camps give kids complete freedom.

Organization of living quarters
Campers typically share a cabin with other campers of the same age or school grade. This is the probably preferable to a camp that will stick the older kids with the younger kids which can make it awkward or intimidating for a younger camper to change clothes in front of cabin mates. Grouping without consideration toward age will also disrupt cabin leaders’ abilities to pick age-appropriate activities for the whole cabin or for the cabin to develop its own identity.

Organization of activities
All camps do things differently, but many will let their campers pick from a variety of available activities to create their own schedule for each day. Some camps have activities scheduled for nearly every hour while others offer more free, leisurely, and personal time for their campers. Most camps will try to balance the two of these organizational schedules with downtime and time for mandatory activities.

If you found this information or any from my previous posts in this series to be helpful, there’s a lot more where that came from in ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’ available right here at Everything Summer Camp. Check it out for yourself right here! And, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey Waffleheads!

Whether you top ‘em with butter, chocolate, syrup, berries, ice cream, all of the above, or something even better…waffles are an absolute favorite the world over! Often enjoyed as a breakfast food as well as an afternoon snack or even a dessert dish for after-dinner hours, waffles are transcendent of mealtimes. It’s no wonder we have a holiday to celebrate them!

Today is National Waffle Day.

Nowadays, waffle irons are household appliances. They’re the perfect contraption for creating the iconic pattern of square pocketed surfaces you’ll find on waffles. See, the old French word for waffle—wafla—means ‘a piece of honeybee hive’. It’s these ‘pockets’—the grid shape—that actually makes a waffle a waffle and not…well, a pancake!

Believe it or not, that is the only real purpose to the design of the waffle. It’s actually just a happy accident that the grid design doesn’t just look cool, but actually helps make the surface get evenly crispy and does a great job at holding your syrup, butter, or what have you.

The waffle iron wasn’t patented until 1869. But, the waffle itself had already been around for about 600 years! As advancements of forging metal came along in the 1200s, so came along the ability to craft cooking plates by impressing designs into the metal.

In fact, early waffle plates typically used more than the honeycomb design. Instead landscapes, crests, symbols, and other designs were imprinted on waffles. It wasn’t long before two waffle plates were attached by a hinge to make a sort of ‘iron’. Waffles spread like wildfire across the world and became almost as popular then as they are now!

A favorite among royalty, many kings thoroughly enjoyed waffles. King Francis of France had such a love for waffles that he requested that a waffle maker be specially made of silver just for his royal highness! Whether you’re a king or not, enjoy your waffles today of all days and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John