21 July 2006

Desperately Yours


Slate's cover stories today are all about summer camp. My favorite bit in Timothy Noah's You Are How You Camped:
People (like myself) who didn't enjoy camp tend to have a problem engaging in organized activities of all kinds. Later in life we often become criminals or sociopaths. The more respectable among us often become journalists. If we're extremely bright or creative (or aspire to be), we may become writers or scholars or artists.

Shocking as this may be, I fall into that category. I did not like summer camp. I was a nervous child, so being surrounded with unfamiliar normal children plunged me into my own personal Lord of the Flies hell.

Granted, I do remember two semi-positive camp experiences. I went to Girl Scout Camp in New Hampshire with a friend of mine from home. The week went by quickly, and though I didn't love such forced group activities as swimming lessons on a cold and cloudy day, we had a pretty good time. The following summer, we were signed up to go to another camp together, this time on the Seacoast, but she bailed on me at the last minute, and I had to go alone.

Now, that was one hellacious camp experience. I was surrounded by strange children, adult counselors who didn't seem to like children in the first place, and very bad camp food. Especially offensive to my culinary sensibilities were the boxed mashed potatoes. The idea. There were no cool rustic cabins with bunks (my first camp had that... I liked that, reminded me of the movies). Just a big carpeted conference room where we slept as a group (though I just stared at the ceiling and counted the minutes until I didn't have to be surrounded by strangers who were not as offended by powdered mashed potatoes as I was.

We were dragged from pillar to post for all manner of group activities. The least pleasant of which was a boat ride out to and hike on one of the Isles of Shoals (Star Island, I believe). The exhaustion and windburn resulting from this jaunt inspired me to write a pathetic missive (closed with the phrase in the subject heading... yeah, that's right) to my parents, asking (nay, begging) to be collected immediately (the aforementioned child-hating adults would not let me use the phone). The letter did not reach my parents until I was already safe at home. Funnily enough, it was in the mailbox along with a letter I'd written before the hated boat trip, saying that things were fine. Naturally, they held onto it and occasionally quote tracts from it during family gatherings (not even two trans-Atlantic moves have parted it from them... lucky me). I imagine it'll comprise a wedding toast or two one day.

After that, I no longer told myself or my parents that I liked camp. There was a conservation retreat with my 6th grade class, but that hardly counts as I knew everyone, my teachers were there, and the counselors were from such exotic places as Australia. Also, we got to climb a ropes course.

I've long thought that there should be a camp for people like me. We could just hang out with our friends and siblings, not be forced to do anything. In my ideal camp I could alternate playing with my sister and reading.

Really, my ideal camp is just staying home. No money spent. No sleeping bags, no mean girls. More frequent showers, no latrines. No boxed mashed potatoes or swimming in crappy weather with uncomfortable color-coded swim caps. No gimp lanyards.

Of course, I still like summer camp movies (especially Wet Hot American Summer...if it counts, being a parody... I'd totally go back to summer camp if Michael Showalter was there). They allow me to imagine what it's like to not be intimidated by other kids or annoyed by organized activities.

2 comments:

J said...

Well you know all about my socialist summer camp experience, but I feel like you would have really liked it there.

We were, techinically supposed to do stuff, but half our activities were discussions of like labor unions and we didn't go to half the things we were supposed to anyway. There was, however, a lot of singing. "Five is for the five year, play, Four! the years we did it in" etc.

The all boys camp I went to for two years was a nightmare though. Pre-teen boys must never be left alone in the woods with no girls to impress. we were animals.

Cupcake said...

God bless you for this post. I also hated camp which was surprising because I loved being a Girl Scout and I loved camping with my troop on the weekends with my friends but my one summer camp experience was awful. The summer camp was just too structured (read: fascist) for me. Mildewed platform tents. Awful food. Weird girls from neighboring towns. Flag circle. Swim test. Dykey leaders with camp names. Not enough "me" time.

I wanted out. I threw up a few times. They let me call home. The "camp director" (I'm using two different words in my head) told my Mom to hang tough and make me ride it out. I began inducing vomitting. Soon I learned it didn't matter. With a latrine, there was no puke for evidence. I just told them I was throwing up. I believe I employeed fake crying. Eventually after about 56 hours I was released from Girl Scout camp. I never even got to the part where you ride horses. However, this cememnted my knowledge that if I put my mind to something, I really could achieve it.

But I loved making gimp lanyards.