A young friend shipped out to sleep-away camp for the first time last week, and it hit me harder than you might imagine. I was delighted by her 9-year-old spunk. I was optimistic that she wouldn’t lose her sneakers in the lake or get melted marshmallow tangled in her hair. (Believe me, it can happen.) But more than that, I was ridiculously overcome with jealousy.
Adulthood has its charms, but this time of year, sleep-away camp is where you want to be. At least it’s where I want to be.
In my family, we were sent off to camp right when school let out, and we didn’t return until there was a hint of chill in the air and three-ring binders were once again on sale. For eight weeks in between, adults were gloriously few and far between. Our days were meticulously planned – Tennis at 9! Sailing at 10! Softball at 11! Pottery after lunch! – and our fun was only interrupted when the counselors had cooked up a slightly different brand of fun for us. (“No water-skiing today, girls, we’re going on a field trip to a candy store!” Or “Let’s take a break from kickball and put on a musical!”)
Most of all, summer was a time to shed our winter personas and remake ourselves into camp girls. If we were awkward around boys or bad at spelling or wore geeky clothes during the school year, none of that mattered. Come June, Liz Weiss turned herself into the fastest swimmer around. Celeste LaRaja showed off a fierce talent for basketball. Liza Josephson, who could tumble nearly as well as Nadia Comaneci, led our victorious team in gymnastics meets against other nearby girls’ camps.
For me, summer meant a transformation into the all-around camper. That’s not hyperbole. I was actually given the All-Around Camper Award five – five! – years in a row. Somewhere, I’ve got the trophies to prove it.
The award was not a celebration of my athletic ability – they rarely give awards for being scared of the ball, after all. It was more like an acknowledgement of the weirdly sunny, can-do personality that camp seemed to bring out in me – swiftly replaced each September by a surly teen contrariness. The winter me might squabble with my parents about Sunday school or math homework, but the summer me – well, she was a delight to be around.
At camp, I got up before the bugle had even finished Reveille and was half asleep before Taps sounded. I helped sweep the cabin even when it wasn’t my turn. At swimming lessons, I leapt into the lake without hemming and hawing, knowing full well the Adirondack ice had barely melted. On camping trips I graciously shared a canoe with a weak paddler and a tent with a known snorer.
I let Barbra Eichel in line ahead of me for the shower when she asked. I gave Donna Rothman money for hot fudge on her mint-chip sundae. I donated my extra batteries to Stacey Director so she could listen to Billy Joel cassettes late into the night. I lent my jacks to Tanya Ariowitsch, though she was likely to lose them. I befriended two Venezuelan cousins, oddly both named Isabelle, whose sketchy English skills made the other girls impatient.
And that wasn’t the half of it. When girls snuck out of camp or smoked cigarettes in the woods, I wasn’t among them. When they finagled a six-pack of beer, I had nothing to do with it. But neither did I tattle. When they primped and preened for a girl-boy dance across the lake, I ceded my time in front of the mirror to those whose Farrah Fawcett hairdos needed more tending than my own more pedestrian ’do.
In retrospect, this sort of goody-two-shoesism might have had its limits. Who wants to be friends with Pollyanna, after all? But I had talents that kept me in the good graces of my bunkmates.
I could sing a little, which is helpful in a fiercely competitive world in which singing, chanting and cheering really matters. I could play the piano, which enhanced our cabin’s skit-making ability. I knew strange bits of trivia – the names of all 50 states in alphabetical order, for instance – which came in handy when we staged mock quiz shows, a strangely frequent occurrence. I even edited a camp newspaper one summer, which allowed me to portray my bunkmates in the most flattering light possible. (“Did you happen to catch Laurie Girion’s performance in Annie Get Your Gun last week? She was amazing!”)
I was 10 years old the first time I got the All-Around Camper award, and it was a delightful surprise. In subsequent years, though, it was something I campaigned for. Everyone is good at something, I suppose, and being the most camper-like camper of them all isn’t half bad.
One year, toward the end of summer, the counselors had us write letters to ourselves about camp – letters that they would mail to us at home in the wintertime. Mine said this: “No matter what happens, there will never be a summer as g-r-e-a-t as the summer of 1-9-7-8.”
No one truly expects to peak at age 12, but really, can you think of a summer that has ever come close?
Felice Belman
(43, Concord)
