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Kid Camp Pradise
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
a general all around sleepover one. 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 goodbye, 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 72 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
boxes:
1. Having lots of fun[ ] I guess it
beats school[ ] Get me the heck outta
here![ ]
2. I miss everybody back home[ ] See you
soon[ ] What was my brother's name
again?[ ]
3. The food is great![ ] I'm surviving
on PB&J[ ] I've lost 10 pounds and my
shorts don't fit![ ]
4. 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. His
hair clearly had not been introduced to his comb
for the prior eight days, and chocolate cookie
remnants surrounded his smiling mouth as he hammed
it up for the camera. He appeared to be having the
time of his life, which was indeed confirmed by his
counselor's letter stating, "I've yet to meet a
warm-blooded mammal of any age that enjoys things
so much!"
We finally picked him up after fourteen long
days for us and two weeks that zipped by at warp
speed for him. We promptly learned about the
inherent joy in having your bathing suit pulled off
by a thunderous water-skiing wipe out; in addition
he confirmed that he could actually eat sixteen
S'mores without throwing up; he also admitted that
he'd lost his toothbrush sometime in the first few
days and that he'd learned some great Australian
slang terms from his counselor.
He also casually advised us of his gigantic
bullfrog named Big Bertha traveling home in his
duffel bag, and asked whether we could change the
upstairs bathtub into a terrarium for her.
But seeing him interrupt his little brother in
mid-sentence with a genuinely affectionate bear
hug, reaffirmed to us that despite the constant
barrage of head noogies and obligatory older
brother insults at home, he did truly miss him.
We also learned that our son could survive quite
happily, for a time, without us. Which to a parent
is both the most rewarding and frightening lesson
of all.
But that is indeed what camp experiences are
partially about. Of course that and his proudly
wearing the ribbons for winning the OutKast karaoke
contest and coming in a close third in the highly
challenging
Cup-the-Hand-Under-the-Armpit-and-Generate-Noise
competition.
So proud.
©2007, Bob
Schwartz
* * *
Bob
Schwartz is the author of four books, the recently
published Would
Somebody Please Send Me to My
Room!; I Run, Therefore
I Am - - NUTS; !; Office Toys: How to Waste Your
Day; and Top Secret Area 51: The Truth Is In Here!
When not involved in the intellectual challenge of
coaching his children’s sports teams and
imparting crucial wisdom like the need for actually
dribbling the basketball instead of running 50 feet
with it under your jersey, he writes three columns.
These include a weekly slice of life humorous
newspaper column entitled Laughing Matters, a funny
column on family life that appears regularly in
numerous parenting magazines throughout the United
States, Canada and Australia and a humorous monthly
column on running (Running in the Laugh Lane) which
has appeared in over 45 magazines. He graduated
from the University of Colorado with a degree in
American Studies and was thus qualified for nothing
except writing term papers and working in fast
food. With such solid planning, he thereafter did
what all others do - - he killed three years and
went to law school receiving his law degree from
the University of Oregon and soon thereafter began
my humorous writing career. He lives in Huntington
Woods, Michigan with his lovely wife (who still
laughs at my jokes but now wonders why) and their
three children who unintentionally supply me with
an endless stream of humorous material.
E-Mail
or www.schwartzhumor.com
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