Health & Fitness
Nostalgia: Summer Camp Memories
Seeing the Facebook photo of Matt on his bunk, reminded me of the old Alan Sherman classic, "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah"
One of our neighbor's 12 year old son, Matthew (who shovels our driveway when we are away during the winter) has been shipped off to two week camp in NH. Seeing the Facebook photo of Matt on his bunk, reminded me of the old Alan Sherman classic, "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah"
Growing-up on the suburban streets of Watertown in the 50's, most of my friends did not get to go to summer camp. We were not poor, but there were four potential campers in the family and our parents did not think that middle class kids needed to go to "away" camp, when the town offered a day program where kids could learn to weave gimp and play baseball and learn crafts.
I'm sure my parents did not intend for us to learn some of the things we actually did learn from some of the park instructors, how to play poker for money and cigarette smoking. I often thought that Jimbo got us all smoking so he could bum Lucky Strikes from us. Needless to say there was no sailing or canoeing at Parker Park on Watertown Street.
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Growing up in Wellesley, our kids were able to experience Summer Camp. My older daughter, it turned out, was allergic to horses; she wrote every day for us to come and bring her home. We resisted her pleas until visiting day, when we finally did drive up to fetch her. By then, she had met a good friend, changed her mind and stuck it out. I am proud of her for that, but I do not think she opted for camp again. When I asked her recently what she recall from her camp days, she couldn't recall any details. PTSD, I guess.
My younger daughter went to a place she called Camp Rottonwood in NH. I forget the real name. We would get a letter that started out "They are forcing us to write home. Please send more stamps." She hated camp too, but kept going back on successive summers, mainly because her best friend was going too. One of my nieces suffered a terrible injury to her leg when her horse banged into a fence. That cut short her camping career.
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Still, I think I would have liked it if I had been able to go to camp as a kid. I missed-out on the sailing, canoeing, diving, hiking, horseback riding, ghost stories around the campfire and adventures, nocturnal pantie-raids on the girls' camp, that sort of thing...Perhaps, I am romanticizing the Summer Camp experience?
What do you remember about your camping experiences?
