You think it's all canoe trips and looking for arrowheads? Oh, you are so wrong...
The first camp I went to (was abandoned at for six weeks?) was a two-hour bus ride from Richmond to a collection of cabins in the bucolic mountains of Virginia. Beautiful mountains, a river meandering by, baseball diamond, open fields, outhouses. Yeah - outhouses. Not flushing toilets, no running water. Showers, sinks, a kitchen at the mess hall, sure; but toilets that flush? Nope. And there were two hole outhouses, four hole outhouses, and one eight-holer that wasn't nearly as nostalgic as the one Thomas Jefferson had at Monticello - because he didn't have RUNNING FRIGGIN' WATER!
Imagine a porta-potty without the porta... Then multiply it by two to eight guys however many times a day for six weeks. Huzzah.
I was sentenced to the second camp for five weeks. It was near Kings Dominion, but do NOT let that fool you! It was no amusement park, boys and girls. The first day I was there, the "veteran" campers grabbed the towels off the younger guys in line and ran away while the counselors just laughed and laughed. Yes, nothing says humor like psyche-scarring games first thing when you get to camp.
Speaking of scarred psyches, both places did the equivalent of the pre-teen death march, the all-male skinny dip. What was THAT about? Seriously? And that was the replacement for a shower for the morning? Who runs this railroad? When the PA system played reveille at one camp every morning I would wake in trepidation as I waited for the announcement of "DIP, SHOWER, or WASH-UP." (A wash-up was running a wet washcloth over your face. That's good hygiene for a pre-pubescent boy living outside for five weeks.) And, seriously, skinny dipping as a bath? There were leaches in that water. I should have demanded to see a manager.
And then the shooting ranges. Bows and arrows, yeah, that was cool, no argument. The rifle range was cool, except that some kid's gun jammed and he pulled it back to check it and fired into the wooden stage we were on. Seriously? Yes, seriously.
The guy who owned the land next to the second camp would plant a couple rows of corn and then see how fast he could go on his dirt bike and pull ears off the stalks...I kid you not. Every now and then, he'd ride the dirt bike into the camp and turn circles, making dirt rooster tails and bellowing obscenities at the top of his lungs. Nobody thought to call the cops? Seriously? Yes, seriously.
Of course, our faith in law enforcement was shaky, at best. See, while we were broiling under the summer sun, the Briley brothers (two of - at the time - Virginia's most notorious death-row inmates) escaped from a prison not terribly far from the camp and, certain they'd pick our little stretch of the 103 mile Mattaponi for a hideout, we were all sure we'd wake up with their murderous faces inches from our own. Again, who's producing this gameshow?
So, let's talk about guilt-tripping my parents. Oh, did I ever. Now, these were the days before cell phones or email (seriously, cordless landline phones were chimeras at the time) so I wrote letters. Grand, guilt-ridden letters. I painted murals of despair, wove tapestries of loneliness, cobbled together melancholy landscapes...but my parents left me to the care of counselors who were clearly taking cues from the journals of Spanish Inquisitors and the possibility that escaped murderers would be at the ever-so-secure screen door of our cabin. Seriously? Yes, seriously. Well, probably not, in all actuality.
I mean, I was at my most wretched in those letters! Nicholas Sparks cries when HE reads them; Adele Reads them when she needs inspiration for a song; Rob Zombie did all showtunes before he read one. The anguish gushed forth like water flowing from the heights of Bridal Veil falls...but I got bupkis as far as an early ride home.
So...I languished at those camps far in the mountains and along the Mattaponi River. Did they make me a better person? Probably. Adversity makes us stronger...blah, blah, blah. Tell that to a pre-teen. I mean, when I got home, everybody was singing "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats. Sure, an ex-Green Beret who was a counselor showed us how to set up a pit to purify our urine into drinking water using just a paper cup, a black trash bag and a rock (I know, right?!?), but Gremlins had come out and I was out of that loop entirely. That's all that mattered.
Why'd I write about this today? One of my best friends in the world has a son at camp who is lamenting his stay and begging to come home. He's miserable, yes (though he'll never capture misery the way I did, I was an artist: my medium...guilt; didn't get me outta camp, though), but he's got a great a great mom who loves him! He'll be fine and he'll benefit from the experience. I hate to admit it, but I'm sure I did. I mean, the nutjob on the dirt bike never killed me; I never got leeches anywhere, or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever; no one ever violated me; and I came home safe and sound. And, guess what? I loved my parents every bit as much when I got home. So will he. Seriously? Yes, seriously.
And, he has a phone with iTunes and Spotify, so he won't miss anything.
The wagon rolls on. Thanks for riding shotgun.
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