Via Joe Cavazos @ Flickr.
It’s been in the nineties and humid in Manhattan this week, and I’m so thankful to be spending the dog days of summer chilling–literally–in my air-conditioned office. Of course, I’d rather be at the Harpy Beach House, or Banff, or the Scottish Highlands, but every summer I reflect on how glad that I don’t have to go to summer camp anymore.
See, I was a little geekling whose idea of a fabulous time was sitting in a corner with a book. I hated being rushed from one scheduled activity to another with no downtime (still do, actually). But MamaSharper, being a working mom, had to find something to do with me and my stepsister when school was out, so we were packed off to YMCA day camp. We swam, we played kickball, we made a lot of shit out of popsicle sticks, and we ate lunch every day in a local park that was absolutely rife with daddy-longlegs. I didn’t love it but I didn’t have a choice. Fortunately by junior high we were allowed to stay home instead. The dogs loved the company, and the Arlington Public Library became my de facto summer camp.
Now, if I wasn’t crazy about day camp, you can imagine how I felt about sleep-away camp. I gave it a couple tries, and both times it was an EPIC FAIL. Everything was so overscheduled. No time to read or daydream. The food sucked. I was shy. I didn’t want to make new friends–I wanted to be with my friends from home, my dogs and my family. Luckily, my parents realized it was a bad fit for me and never pressured me to go back.
I think I’m in the minority, though. I have many friends who loved camp the way I love birthday cake and Jon Hamm (PhDork is one of them). Here in New York City, it seems like every other Jewish woman my age went blissfully to summer camp year after year and formed meaningful lifelong friendships there. They make it sound so great I almost want to go back and give it another try–as long as I could work in a couple hours of reading time every afternoon.
Any happy–or unhappy–campers out there? Single-sex or co-ed? Did you love the bad food and bunk beds? Are you still in touch with your friends from camp? Bring your arts and crafts and bug juice to the comments…
Becky, I HATED camp. Hated, despised, loathed. I went for like at least 5 yrs. My final year at sleep away camp was when I was 13 and the camp directors “suggested” to my parents perhaps I should leave camp, after I got caught smoking several times and told a few counselors to “fuck off.” Ah…being a teenager.
oops! also meant to say I had the same problem, I was a total bookworm and just wanted to stay inside and read all day.
@bluebears: There should be a camp for bookworms that’s just row upon row of comfy chairs on a porch somewhere, with snack breaks. I don’t know why no one’s thought of this. It would be the easiest camp ever to run.
I want to go there. Immediately.
I was exactly like you as a kid. My parents sent my brother and me to day camp at the local college for a couple summers and I hated every minute of it. I was always faking injuries or calling my mom at work from the office, crying.
They also sent us to Vacation Bible School, ugh. Hated every minute of that too.
The one summer camp experience I really did love was basketball camp. I was really into basketball as a middle-schooler, and the day camp (also at the local college) was really fun.
My only experience with sleep-away camp was as a counselor. I did that the summer after my freshman year of college. I was in charge of a bunk full of 10 year old girls, and director of the drama program.
One of the other counselors and I have been good friends ever since. She is visiting me from Seattle over Labor Day weekend and I can’t wait. The jokes about camp never get old (to us).
I went to girl scout day camp multiple times and it wasn’t that bad, but mostly because my mom was a counselor so I could run to her and refuse to do anything. When I was 10 I tried out Camp Archibald for sleep away camp. I left on the 3rd day and never returned even to day camp. I hate that crap.
I refused to go to camp. Summer is for sleeping late. I also hate forced socializing (to this day).
I did attend one- or two-week camps at the community college, where we built little robots and launched rockets. I also went to an outdoor art camp, painting in the park. I wish I was there now…
I had exactly one experience at a sleep-away camp and it was a disaster. I went to Brownie camp with my best friend (with whom I had a rather fraught relationship, but that’s another story). This was when I was maybe 8. It had latrines-the kind with disgusting, dark, vile-smelling pits with boards with holes over them . You had to find them in the dark with a flashlight.
Within a week I had developed a mysterious ear infection, which the camp nurse attempted to treat with Pepto-Bismol. After a few days in the infirmary crying and moaning in pain, my mom came to take me home. The ear infection was cured in about 15 minutes with the application of a hot wet towel on the ear.
I never went to camp again. And nowadays, when I travel, the hotel had better have room service.
I grew up in Maine, home to many a sleep-away summer camp geared towards urban and suburban youth from the greater New England area. (Wet Hot American Summer, anyone?)
My mother didn’t entertain the idea of paying an arm and a leg to send me someplace virtually the same as our backyard.
And so I enrolled in, wait for it, Fish Camp. It was wonderful. A day camp located right on the water, the days were split between marine biology lessons (complete with giant foam costumes of lobsters), non-aggressive sports, and tons of free time.
It’s still around! http://www.mrandmrsfish.com/htmlsite/fish-camp.html
My parents couldn’t afford sleepaway camp, and I’ve always been sad about it. Some of my cousins got to go to one that my aunt worked at because they got a discount, but I was already too old by them. I feel like I missed out on a formative childhood experience. At least, one for white kids. Apropos of Hill Rat’s comment in another post, it occurs to me that sleepaway camp is a pretty waspy/Northeast tradition, no, in the States?
Fish camp sounds awesome.
Spark, it was the forced socializing that sucked so hard. Even as a counselor I detested the forced socializing. My buddy and I gravitated towards each other like magnets because we both had bish, plz faces on during move-in and neither of us is all that fond of children. Hah.
Still, that summer in the Poconos was still memorable. I liked hanging out in the arts & crafts lodge when my kids were playing some sport. The freedom of living away from it all – everyone kind of scuzzy and pure at the same time – is precious.
Ooh, and now that I’ve made that comment a memory has surfaced of a rich white acquaintance/friend of mine who had a $3000 custom-made couch WHEN HE WAS AN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT and he liked to position himself a man of the people. (He was a stoner of some reknown.)
We got into this argument about his “down-to-earth” quotient once and he said, “But I went to summer camp!” And I said, “My parents could never afford summer camp!”
And he said, “But they had scholarships for First Nations students!”
Readers, I laughed. I could not help it.
OMG, I HATE FORCED SOCIALIZING SO MUCH! Glad to know I’m not the only person who dreaded camp for that reason.
@PSoul: Yeah, I think summer camp is practically a religion in the NE. I knew kids who went to camp down South, but it was generally Bible camp or church-related. Um…did this dude you mentioned think you were Native American?
My mom was a teacher–therefore on the same work schedule–and we couldn’t really afford summer camp when I was a kid. I did some half-day programs, but that was mostly it… until I was old enough to babysit. Then, I saved all of my money to go to geek camp. (Seriously, you had to test to get in.) I LOVED GEEK CAMP. Loved it. Yes, I was doing things like advanced biology and “mandatory fun” (sports and arts stuff in the late afternoons), but it was such a relief for this little geeklet. One of my very dearest friends is someone I met there. It was lovely to be surrounded by other geeks for 3 weeks those two summers….
I’m getting better with forced socializing as I grow up and feel like I would enjoy camp now, but thinking on it, I was such an awkward, unpopular child with her nose in a book and I would have resented being made to adhere to a schedule that wasn’t composing of alternating sleeping/bike riding/reading.
@Becky: I think he was simply offering it as evidence of the egalitarian nature of his summer camp.
I loved summer camp. Most of it, anyway. I went to a few day camps that weren’t fabulous. But I also went to the Concordia Language Villages for nine summers and absolutely adored it. There are a lot of typical camp kinds of activities, but the emphasis of the CLV camps is on learning a foreign language and learning about a foreign culture. It is so much fun!
http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/
love CLV!
I went to a Jewish sleepaway summer camp for 7 summers. The only way we could afford it (my mom being a school teacher) was that my dad wangled a quid pro quo kind of deal. So it was more like a parenting vacation for my parents (which, now that I am a parent, I totally get). I am a bookworm, I hate soccer (a big activity at said camp), am no athlete (all sports were a big deal there) and I do better with folks one-on-one than in big groups. The only thing I was good at was Jewish trivia games. So I was a total geek. I hated it. And every spring, my parents would ask me if I wanted to go again. I would say no, and then they would convince me what I good time I had and how much I would miss if I didn’t go (I started camp at age 8, so this was pretty easy for them to do). As I got older, there was no option given at all. I think this mostly becasue we couldn’t afford any other option and they didn’t want me hanging around the house. I did make some friends and it may have been sort of good for me to be forced to socialize than to spend all summer in my room reading.
Oddly, it turns out that my gyn went to the same camp. Weird.
I went to sleep-away camp for three or four years, but it was only a week long. I went to a French language camp, which was great, because I pretty much pwned everyone in my age group in French. There were also Spanish and German language students there. The camp had a lot of singing involved, in the studied language. I remember strongly that the German songs involved a disturbingly high amount of pelvic thrusting and loud “Hwah!”s.
I used to go to a great variety of day camps, though. I did a lot of art camps — pottery and batik and puppet making and medieval themed and etching and all sorts of things. I once did a class at the art museum that involved drawing, which I’m terrible at. Since I made my peace with my utter lack of drawing talent early on, my counselors were a little freaked out by how little I was interested in improving the quality of my art, as opposed to just gazing and the paintings and sketching randomly.
I also went to science-y camps…I did one on a boat on the rivers in my city, doing marine biology and nautical stuff, and one that was focused on getting girls in to engineering (and probably others that I’m forgetting right now). All very fun learning experiences. I think that doing a good variety of camps is a great way to find out what you’re interested in, and shorter day camps have less forced socializing (as I was also a nose-in-book type).
@PilgrimSoul: I’m from the midwest and its pretty popular here. It wasn’t just an upper class thing though (although there were certainly more expensive camps) because a lot of churches had sleepaway camps that were for a week or two and were fairly inexpensive. Actually even in 5th grade my whole grade went to a sleepaway camp for a week one november. It was free through the state it promted “team building” exercised and was staffed by college aged education majors.
gah! october not november, promoted not promted. I need a nap.
I’m from the South kinda – Texas – and went to Baptist church camp every year. I liked many of the things about camp, mainly because they weren’t very good at making sure we complied with the written schedule. Church camp was where I first learned about drinking and smoking and kissing boys. The things I didn’t like were sitting through the same scary You’re going to HELL plays and bonfires every year and the fact that I went to camp in Texas in the summer which meant we had to “nap” for like three hours every day because one summer everyone got mad sick from the heat.
We stayed with my grandmother during the summer and she sent us to a different Vacation Bible School every week. They were like day camp for Baptists where we would do crafts and sing songs and play and eat snowcones, so we did not interupt our caretaker’s “shows” with demands for attention. I liked these, because I liked school.
I’d really like a less-structured summer camp for adults, where activites were available but not manadated. I keep wanting to go to this retreat: http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/learning/bow/schedule.phtml but haven’t had the time.
@beckysharper: I want to go to your bookworm camp immediately!
Seriously, there NEEDS to be a camp like this for bookish kids (I have 2 of them, and every summer I ask if they want to do camps, they are HORRIFIED
I had to go to all-girl Baptist sleep away camps until I was 13.
Then I went to co-ed Baptist sleep away camps until I declared myself an atheist (largely due, in part, to the trauma of Baptist sleep away camp) and had absolutely nothing to do with The Church.
It was that bad. Seriously. Imagine you’re watching Jesus Camp, except that it’s happening to you.
I hated day camp (never went to an overnight). I spent every summer staying with my dad, who lived far away from my mom (she was supposed to move to where he did too, but didn’t for a very long time), and played blissfully with cousins until about age 9. Then my mom decided that I was too shy and camp would help–so my dad was forced to send me to a camp instead of to my cousins’.
Every other kid there had come with a friend or two, and I knew NO ONE, seeing as the camp was in a different state than my school and all. I was never one for forced socializing, and wasn’t great at sports or art (also a big bookworm), so I didn’t exactly find great success there in any respect.
Thinking back on it, as exaggerated as it might sound, I think it was actually pretty traumatic.
“@bluebears: There should be a camp for bookworms that’s just row upon row of comfy chairs on a porch somewhere, with snack breaks. I don’t know why no one’s thought of this. It would be the easiest camp ever to run.”
Ha! I love that idea- so much better than Model UN camp!
When I was younger, I loved camp. Until about age thirteen, I’d say. After that, at least in my experience, a lot of the girls tend to get meaner. Then again, it might have just been my experience. I know some of the worst bullying I ever had to deal with was at camp. There were some wonderful things about it, though. I live in the middle of Manhattan, so the chance to go somewhere /green/ was wonderful, as was the chance to do all that outdoorsy type stuff that I love that I rarely get a chance to do the rest of the time. I’m sorry if this is all meandering-like, but I think the point I’m trying to make is that camp tends to be more enjoyable simply for being camp (versus for the people you meet there) when you’re younger. Also, I love this blog, and this is the first time I’ve actually had the guts to post. So, uh, thanks!
I went to several camps as a kid, but in the Northwest camp is pretty much always just a week long. The Northeastern all-summer-long thing would have traumatized me, for sure; I always got homesick. I went to an OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry) when I was like 7, then did a week of Campfire camp every summer for a few years, and then went to horse camp in middle school.
The horse camp was also Bible camp, and although I LOVED it, including the Bible stuff, I think back to some of the crazy I was exposed to there and how readily I bought it and I’m appalled. Especially the summer I was a junior counselor there, holy moly, the staff meetings were ludicrous. I guess there was a “seminary” of some sort on site, and a lot of the senior counselors were students there, and I remember a couple of them were all about “apologetics,” which involved standing outside the temple in Salt Lake City shouting down the Mormons about their heretical beliefs like those nutty dudes with sandwich boards. Another guy wanted to put a “wolf table” up where the kids could peruse various insidious religious tracts so as not to be fooled if they were ever presented as “Christian” teachings. This table included a Catholic Bible, because of the Apocrypha as well as the fact that Catholic churches don’t have empty crosses but crucifixes. The logical leap there was that “our” Jesus isn’t dead anymore, he’s resurrected, but “their” Jesus is still hanging up there on the cross. This place was NOT messing around.
I really loved counseling, though, especially the week I did day camp with the little teeny kids. My camp name was Guppy, and I had a group of little girls who were going into second grade, and one of them asked me if I was married (I was 15). And I told her I wasn’t because I was a little young, so she asked if I had a boyfriend and I told I used to, but he broke up with me. And she said, “I love you, Guppy, I’d never break up with you.” Which brings a little tear to my eye to this day. In spite of the religious lunacy, camp was usually good times.
I live in Pittsburgh (bring it, stalkers!) and we have absolutely fabulous summer resources for kids. We never wanted or needed to send our kids away for the summer because of the huge range of choices offered here. From arts of all sorts, to science of all sorts, to camps in the park to learn about our ecosystem (we have wonderful parks here in the city) to sports camps to a week on a boat exploring our three rivers-the hard part was making the choice.
Pittsburgh ftw!
@CyFur: Hey, welcome! I often wonder if I have kids in New York City what I’ll do to make sure they’re exposed to greenery. Since I can’t afford a house in the Berkshires, summer camp may be my only option. Who knows–maybe they won’t be as anti-camp as me!
@BeckySharper: Thanks for the warm welcome! And I would recommend sending kids to camp when they’re young(ish), ’cause you can bounce back and adjust to stuff better, and I think you can enjoy activities more. I’m also a bookworm, but I did get some enjoyment from outdoorsy type things.
I came of age in the 1970s and 1980s. Camp was for “rich kids” and “rich White kids” at that. My friends and I – I was raised in a predominately White suburban community – spent the summers engaged in physical activities of all kinds, and, enjoying each other’s company.
As a middle class Black kid, I didn’t know of any other middle class Black kids who attended camp, and, if one was Black, they were so-called disadvantaged Black kids, from urban areas, and attended camp via programs such as the Fresh Air Fund.
[...] the heels of our last Friday Fun Thread re: summer camp, I have to give a big shout out to some fierce girls who spend their summers [...]