All Registered for Summer Camp

This year Molly is going to turn nine and will be old enough for over night camp. We are opting for a 5 night ecologically focused camp. To be honest I don't know who's more excited she or I?

Man, did I love summer camp when I was a kid! Archery, campfires, swimming, capture the flag, boating, new friends, ropes courses and NO parents!! Totally awesome! I am so excited for her.

Back in the day I went to an all girls camp for a week or two every summer. As my mom tells it I came home covered in dirt with the biggest smile and hours and hours of stories. Sounds about right to me.

Camp was cool. I remember the year we slept in a platform tent and had to rent mosquito netting for $2/week. The parents of this girl Karen didn't cough up the $2 and decided a face full of Deet would do the trick instead. By the first morning her face was three times its original size with a zillion bug bites. Karen spent a night or two in the infirmary then came back with a mosquito net of her own. Of course this was way before the over-protective parent came into fashion. No one thought twice about poor Karen's health or her slightly negligent parents. Good Times!

Another year the session was two weeks. Unbeknownst to us campers, every morning at breakfast the director sent counselors to all the tents and cabins (150 in all) and ranked cleanliness. At the end of the first week my tent mates and I were surprised and I remember quite honored to be awarded the "messiest tent" designation. Our prize/punishment was to "slop" the pigs daily. Slop is great stuff. At our camp it was a vat full of the left overs from every ones plates scraped together into this congealed mass. Picture the drain at the bottom of your kitchen sink after dinner dishes. Bits of food of every texture, color and smell all wet and slimy. Now visualize this multiplied by 500 and dumped into a less than clean 5 gallon bucket. Umm. Memories. After breakfast the five of us with Rob, the handyman, would haul this slop up the hill to the resident pigs. Clara, the mom pig, was humongous and she had 5 very large piglets - Huey, Dewey, Luey, Snoopy and Pinkie. Once you got used to the mud, muck and smell they were really quite cute. I remember like it was yesterday the last time we saw Clara and her adorable family. Saying goodbye was hard and tears were shed. As we left we asked Rob, "How long have the pigs been pets?" He laughed and told us they weren't pets but were raised every year, fatted up, then slaughtered by the owner for a huge Christmas dinner. As I said before Good Times!

Then there was the time that Sarah was my partner and I saved her life. Sarah was always my partner that summer on account of the red bag she had tied around her neck. The bag held a needle of medicine that Sarah had to receive within minutes of being stung by a bee or die. So in the imminent wisdom of the camp and with no notification to my own parents; I, a mere 10 year old, was shown what to do in the event of a bee sting and assigned as Sarah's permanent partner. Nothing was supposed to happen because we were almost always with a counselor and they knew what to do. But on a walk back from the showers one afternoon Sarah and I met up with a bee. She freaked out and was stung. I gave her the shot then got the nurse just like I was told to do. Sarah ended up being fine but left camp nonetheless. I'll say it again...Good Times.

As a mom these memories scare the shit out of me. But I lived through them as a kid and really didn't think twice about any of them at the time. Why send my kid to camp if this is my base of experience? Because 2009 is not 1979 and these crazy memories are more than overshadowed by all the really good stuff:

roasting marshmallows
care packages from home
swimming across the lake
snipe hunts
camp songs
Popsicle stick art
kickball
staying up all night giggling
50's Sock Hop dances
twin look alike competitions
night hikes through the woods
sneaking across the road to spy on the boys camp
talent shows
sailing
animal safaris
the mile high ropes course
capture the flag when we beat the boys camp
And hours and hours of pure childhood joy!

Have the time of your life Molly!!! I can't wait to hear all your stories.