An Honest Day in the Life of a Camp Rocker

You awake to the sound of a fellow Camp Rocker drumming against your bed frame.

“Wake up, Rocker! It’s time to go to the mess hall and get your plate of gourmet french toast kicked off the table by a white break dancer in a sideways baseball cap!”

You crawl out of bed already immaculately dressed in your three layered shirts and ironic tie. You head to the mess hall to find your french toast already on the ground.

You have a little bit of free time before class so you practice your guitar in a canoe on the lake. Another camper dances up out of the lake and high kicks the guitar - smashing the strings and launching it into the water. After comically shrugging, they dance back into the lake.

Now guitarless, you head to your first class. Your cabin mate is out there somewhere writing music with Mitchie but counselor Jason Gray is forcing you to build a bird house. “What the fuck? This has nothing to do with music” you think to yourself. As the thought crosses your mind, Mitchie kicks down the door with her quirky combat boots. “We need to learn an intimidating chant march to face down Camp Star!” she yells. You spend the next five hours stomp clapping and yelling “CAMP ROCK” over and over. Mitchie forces you to skip lunch. She threatens to make you skip dinner too. You begin to wonder if there are any actual adults here.

In a rare moment between reps, there is a commotion out on the lake. Campers from Camp Star are here and they…brought cannons!? Oh god! They shoot canisters into the air that parachute down to the ground. One canister containing marshmallows hits a young camper in the head and knocks him unconscious. Surely, Mitchie will let you retreat and regroup? Wrong. You are now doubling down on your rehearsals.

When you’re finally released, you find the phone in one of the common areas. You dial your parent’s number and hear radio silence on the line (the only kind of silence there is at Camp Rock). You find another phone in the mess hall as you wait for dinner. Still the same. Why aren’t any of the phones working? You begin to panic when you see Ms. Torres, Mitchie’s mother, holding up a pair of bolt cutters. “Uh uh uh,” she says, “no one gets out of here until we defeat Camp Star at the Final Jam.” You begin to cry. She doesn’t care. She jumps up and kick-ball-changes your BLT off the table. You just wanted to learn how to play music and now you have found yourself under Mitchie’s rule. She puts a countdown to the Final Jam up in the mess hall. You can’t help but wonder if it’s actually a count down of your final days.

As you lay in bed, eyes wide open, waiting for the drumming that will wake you from the sweet abyss of a dreamless sleep, you think, “I probably should have just taken that summer job from Sharpay Evans instead.”