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December 17, 2004
Camp life can be hard for kids
But burnt blankets and outdoor toilets can't detract from the
good times.
SHARON MELNICER
My daughter confessed to me the other day that she hated going
to camp, that she hated everything about camp, that she hated it
the first year and even more the second year.
"But," I rationalized, "it was a different camp the
second year. In 1982, you went to B'nai Brith. The next summer you
went to Camp Massad." I knew this was a lame answer but I felt
compelled to say something.
"That's why I hated it more," she explained. "You
forced me to go a second time and it was way worse than the first
time because you and Dad knew how much I loathed it the first time
and you still made me go!"
Her words were fairly running together by now and she was speaking
at a rate that easily exceeded the speed of light. Mach 3 was now
a concept I was clearly beginning to understand. Because I'm a sensitive
parent and receptive to my child's many moods, I had no real trouble
picking up the fact that there was a lot of hostility being vented,
repressed rage even, despite the 20-year gap between the present-day
and her camp-going experiences in the summers of 1982 and 1983.
"Boy!" I said. "I didn't know you felt so strongly
about it."
But I should have known; I shouldn't have been surprised at all.
Why? Because, like her, I, too, had hated camp ... every torturous
second of every insufferable minute of every interminable, bug-infested
day. Three hellish weeks in "beautiful Lake of the Woods"
where "fun" was scheduled just as inflexibly as bedtime
and brushing your teeth. Where you had to learn to how to paddle
a canoe, put up a pup-tent and pee in the woods.
My mother insists that I made her register me for camp during the
blustery December before, while the Winnipeg winter encased all
of us who lived on the Prairies like we were woolly mammoths left
over from the Ice Age. That way, I'd be assured a place when camp
actually started the following July. This may be true, or not. What
is true is that by June, I was definitely much the wiser about what
actually went on at camp, things like hikes, outdoor toilets, rock-climbing
and dirt. Thanks to research, interviews with disgruntled ex-campers
and actually reading all those shiney brochures, I knew what I was
in for. This newly gathered information added to my growing fear
that camp was not for me; that it really wasn't going to be like
setting up a tent in the middle of a carpeted room at the Holiday
Inn and giving up a double Sealy Posture-pedic for a sleeping bag
on the floor. But my parents had paid the money and, unbeknown to
me, made holiday plans of their own for while I was away. Their
secret plot to vacation on their own, without me, revealed
itself to me in several not-so-subtle ways.
Mail from home is an important support in the wilderness for the
young, lonely, homesick, nature-hating camper. I should also mention,
at this point, that I'm an only child. I could have been the "I
Loathe the Outdoors" poster-child, had the Department of Tourism
been running such a campaign at the time. But those hormone-driven
teenagers, aka "camp counsellors‚" made me go outside
anyway, rain or shine, frosty or torrid; they made me go on "overnights"
and sleep on the hard, rock-strewn ground after I ineptly tried
for hours to build a campfire which, at its height, only smoked
and smoldered, like a sweetgrass smudge. At least, it helped keep
the mosquitoes away. Nonetheless, expecting it to exude some warmth,
I lay too close to it and promptly singed my hair. I also managed
to burn a hole right through my mother's good Hudson Bay blanket
(I didn't have a sleeping bag ... my mother thought a woollen blanket
would be warmer) and set my underwear on fire at the same time.
This was only one of five pairs my mom had packed to last me the
whole 21 days, as long as, according to her, I dutifully rinsed
"a pair or two" out every evening. Oh yeah, that was going
to be cool!
She had even packed me a small box of Cheer for that express purpose.
The irony didn't escape me.
Naturally, I wrote home to tell her about my burned hair, my barbequed
bum, my scorched underwear, my aching back due to cruelly being
forced to sleep on the cold, hard ground and, incidentally, my slightly
damaged, hardly blackened, Cajun-cooked Hudson Bay blanket. Tears
stained my lined looseleaf, the blue ruled lines waving, weaving
and drooping with every drop of heartfilled misery.
"Dear Mom,
Please, could you send me some new underwear, Mom, and maybe, could
you also send me another blanket, one not so new or good this time
that you don't care about? I'll pay for a new Hudson Bay blanket
out of my allowance when I get back, which could be right away,
if you'll only take me home today so I can sleep in my own bed tonight
and take a bath and brush my teeth and see you and Dad and give
you a hug and a kiss because I miss you so much...." More tears
followed and then the final pathetic plea: "Get me outta
here." Camp was my cell in an Ecuadorian prison and three
weeks was a life-sentence. Didn't my parents understand this? Well,
they would now! Wait till they read my letter!
An answer arrived the next day. Wow! I was amazed at the speed of
the postal system. I ripped open the letter, eager to read my mother's
comforting words, searching for the time my folks would get here
to Town Island to pick me up. Instead, my mother said she was thrilled
that I was having such a wonderful time and she knew I'd enjoy camp
and that she was glad I was having such a good time. (This is not
an error – she said it twice in one sentence.) She also said
she'd see me when camp was done, and she was glad that I didn't
need anything. And that I was having such a great time!
Plainly, I had either received a severe blow to the head without
knowing it or my mother had been abducted by aliens and was living
on Neptune where they didn't speak any English. Several more Mary
Poppins-like letters arrived from home over the next several days,
none of them related to anything I was recounting in any of my subsequent
letters, things like my bladder infection, my canoe overturning,
Fat Ilana stepping on my toothpaste and squeezing its entire contents
out on the ground with a fart-like spurt, the woodticks embedded
in my head, my fall out of an upper bunk and splitting my lip open,
or the fact that I had naively given myself the nickname of "Pussy"
because everybody there had a nickname. (How pathetic was that!)
It all fell on deaf ears. I was beginning to think it was like,
maybe, the letters I was getting had been written before I ever
left for camp, like in December when my application was sent in
and, that, maybe, my mother wasn't reading my letters at all. Maybe,
some other person, like the next door neighbor, was depositing these
pre-constructed, non sequitors into a North End Winnipeg mailbox
every two days, as per my mother's instructions! No, too farfetched,
too unbelievable, not possible ... there had to be another explanation.
The mystery would be unravelled when I got home.
I'd like to say the remaining time at "Camp Hell" joyfully
sped by in the arms of Mother Nature, but I laboriously counted
the days off by scratching strokes into the wall beside my bunk
with the sharp end of a bobby pin. Liberation Day at last arrived.
I was going home. Thank the Lord. Amen.
My parents met me at the bus after it pulled up at the Y. Dad silently
drove us home in our used red and white Dodge. We entered the house
through the back door and walked the three stairs up into the kitchen.
Mom and Dad were all smiles. They looked happy, rested, relaxed.
They had good color in their cheeks. (Now, after 33 years of marriage,
I know why!) Unlike me, they were squeaky clean and their breath
was minty-fresh.
Mom pointed me toward the kitchen table; a couple of "special
surprises" were waiting there, especially for me. My tired
eyes rounded in astonishment. A shoebox sat at one corner of the
table; it had the famous Capezio trademark scrawled across the lid.
Inside were new shoes, soft, pink, leather flats that looked just
like real ballet shoes. At the other corner was a selection of chocolate
bars with names like Baby Ruth, Almond Joy and Hershey Krackle Bar.
What was this? Where did they get these exotic, foreign objects?
These things were only available in the United States in 1955. They
were definitely not available in Canada! Not in the 1950s, they
weren't! My parents had gone "across the line" without
me. I couldn't believe it. They had not told me they were going,
probably anticipating (correctly) that I'd want to go with them.
They had wanted to have a holiday alone while I, lonesome and homesick,
withered away at camp.
"Who sent me the letters?" I asked. "Who would do
such a dastardly thing?" (I always had a good vocabulary.)
"Oh, that was Mrs. Rosenberg next door. Such a nice lady,"
my mother replied.
So, the conspiracy of lies and betrayal was complete. Like Hamlet's
ghost, I shuffled off to my bedroom, my filthy duffel bag abandoned
on the kitchen floor. I numbly barricaded myself in there for the
next two weeks. I spoke to no one. I ignored my mother's pleadings
to come out, to, at least, talk to her. Meals were placed outside
my door. I only left to go to the bathroom. The storm finally blew
over in October.
In December, the glossy brochure directed to "All Returning
Campers" arrived in the mail. Much to my astonishment, not
to mention my mother's, I couldn't wait to thumb through it, to
look at the pictures of the now-familiar buildings, the beautiful
Lake of the Woods setting, the counsellors' friendly faces, the
list of exciting activities and special events in which campers
could participate. Though I was sure in mid-October that nothing
in the world could ever make me go back to camp, by mid-December,
that's all I wanted to do. Register again.
I wanted more of the good memories and the happy times that were
the essence of the camp experience, all of the positive stuff that
emerged and bloomed when October's dust had finally settled. I wanted
it for my daughter too, 31 years later. Why? Because no kid should
ever have to grow up without going to camp, at least once.
Sharon Melnicer is a freelance writer living in Winnipeg,
Man.
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