Kid Camp Paradise
Rate This Article
When I saw my son with the brochure advertising for the summer camp devoted strictly to skateboarding and cartoon drawing, well, I knew this wasn't exactly the camp of my youth. Times have changed since I attended those generic multi-activity camps.
Camps where I had to endure my inept lanyard-making ability (one time I almost tied off circulation in two of my fingers with my less-than-brilliant braiding), before engaging in the thrill of water-balloon scooter dodgeball.
In sending our first child to camp, we did find one that was of the general, all-around sleepover variety.
When camp day arrived, I had the normal trepidation as my wife and I dropped him off with what seemed to be enough supplies to comfortably survive twelve years alone in the wilderness, while also having the capability to change clothing six times a day and never run out of T-shirts and shorts.
As we waved good-bye, I tried to convince myself that he'd write us many enlightening and lengthy letters detailing his superb camp experiences.
But, deep down, I knew that was as likely as a bar of soap actually making physical contact with his body at any point over the subsequent two weeks.
As for mail, I just couldn't quite foresee that he'd be saying to his bunkmates, "Hey, you guys go ahead and have your ice cream and start playing mud volleyball without me. I'm just going to stay inside here and finish up this five-page letter to my folks while I review my daily journal notes, and then do a quick spelling check."
The first week passed without a single word from our camper.
The mailman ultimately learned to put a rubber band around our mail, sprint past the house, and swiftly toss it toward our front door. This way he avoided being the recurring tackling dummy for an overly anxious information-starved parent, namely me, who desperately needed a camp letter of some kind.
As camp progressed into the second week, I wondered if our son had now completely forgotten us or had simply lost all of his seventy-two stamped and addressed envelopes with which we'd diligently equipped him. I thought that maybe we should have sent him with pre-made post cards that could be completed by simply checking the appropriate box:
- Having lots of fun.
- I guess it beats school.
- Get me the
heck outta here!
- I miss everybody back home.
- See you soon.
- What was my
brother's name again?
- The food is great!
- I'm surviving on PB&J.
- I've lost
10 pounds, and my shorts don't fit!
- Love and kisses.
- Signing off from your wild and crazy son.
- Adios from your tattoo boy.
After what seemed like a decade, we did eventually receive a letter and were pleased to learn the following:
He did indeed remember he had parents and two younger siblings.
The sole reason, apparently, that he finally wrote us was to request that we, as quickly as possible, forward him his latest Nintendo Power magazine.
He could still produce an almost-legible, four-syllable sentence that seemed, to me, to say: "Camp is a blast!" My more skeptical wife was left wondering if it were instead some new secret code actually reading "Damp in a mast!"
Certainly not a letter with as much detail as the U.S. Tax Code, but it was all we needed to know.
We did thereafter receive a picture of him along with a short, but revealing, note from his counselor. The photo showed our son with a fairly dirty T-shirt, worn inside out and backward, and sporting his shoes untied with no socks on.
Copyright 2007 Modern Mom, LLC. All rights reserved.
