One night, when I was seven years old, a man came to my house. My mother let him in, and he opened his briefcase. He read through whatever paperwork he had, and I didn’t pay attention. It was grown-up stuff, I didn’t care. Their attention eventually turned to me, they asked me if I wanted to watch a movie. I said yes.
The movie played, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what was in it. Likely a bunch of fun and exciting things I could do at summer camp. It must have been fun and exciting, because when they asked if I wanted to go, I leaped up and down with joy and said yes. So begins one of the most… unusual summers of my life.
It started with a long car ride to some parking lot somewhere. As I remember it, it was very likely the airport of Midway or O’Hare, likely to be something of a hub for all the parents ready to unload their noisy children for a couple months. I saw the vehicle I would spend the next seven hours or so in, a large bus. I remember it had its own bathroom, and that my bag was stowed underneath in a compartment. I don’t remember much of the ride up there, but I didn’t talk to anyone. At this point, I was already pretty wary of people, I was far from the most popular kid at school (as indicated in chapter IV), and figured that other people existed to hurt me. I do remember one kid had boxing puppets, two nuns I think… I remember that they looked like a lot of fun.
The bus arrived in the early evening, with the returning campers singing the camp song as we drove beneath the sign made of sticks. I wonder why every camp sign must be made of sticks?
We’re right behind you, Red Arrow
With a rah rah R-A-C
R-A-C!
And that chorus went on and on. I’m sure there were other lyrics, but those are what stand out the most. I can still hear it in the back of my mind. Not altogether unpleasant, just something that chose to write itself on the walls of my memory. Camp was very musical, I soon realized, as I can remember about a dozen songs, a couple in their entirety. There were sing-a-longs, often.
The first night was uneventful, a dinner of hot-dogs and an evening of wandering aimlessly about the camp, finding my cabin and seeing where I’ll be staying. The cabin was made of logs, with a floor of concrete, the windows had screens, so sleep was relatively bug-free.
The next couple days were spent testing me at various things. Basically, it was a committee of grown-ups that existed to point out my various flaws. I had found out from these experts that:
I couldn’t run for long, so I was out of shape
I couldn’t swim
I couldn’t steer a canoe
Apparently, these were three things integral to the camp experience, so the classes of ‘Fitness’, ‘Swimming’, and ‘Canoe-ing’ were added to my schedule, leaving two activities left for me to pick. So I picked wood-shop and marksmanship. I happened to like both of these, I was actually not to bad with woodworking, and made a nice model paddle-boat. Marksmanship I was abysmal at, failing to score even enough points to earn a score card. I just couldn’t hold the rifle steady.
Swimming I was pretty good at once I learned how to float on the water instead of walking in the water. Nothing really to note there.
Canoe-ing was boring. I just learned how to use the paddle to steer. It was uneventful.
Fitness… was pure hell. What I did in this course was run, run, then run some more. After all the running, we did sit-ups and push-ups, and occasionally a sport where I got to see just how awful at sports I was. More than once did I catch a basketball with my face. After I earned my swimming badge, this was occasionally broken by swimming laps in the lake. On the plus side, this DID get me in shape. I could run a mile and do a number of sit-ups, and felt pretty good.
Socially, I was as inept as ever, quickly descending to the bottom of the popularity ladder. I don’t remember why, but I’m sure the basketballs to the face didn’t help. I fought regularly with a cabin-mate named Ricky. During fights he would pull my hair, but he had a buzz-cut, so I couldn’t return the favor. The counselors seemed to encourage this behavior. I can’t remember what I did, but I remember being told that the counselor would personally tie my hands behind my back and let each camper take a swing at me if I did it again.
Without strong authority figures, the whole place had a ‘Lord of the Flies’ feel to it. Older campers bossed around younger campers, and punishment was meted out by whoever saw fit to do so. Combine that with public baths in the lake (there were no shower facilities), and the whole thing felt decidedly tribal. It was like gym class became LIFE.
I can remember being forced to swim on a forty-degree day, (the camp was in northern Wisconsin, on the border of Canada), while the counselor looked on from the dock in his sweatsuit and jacket. I remember having pebbles thrown at me while I washed up one day, while the counselors laughed. If my faith in grown-ups had been shaky beforehand, it was completely obliterated by this experience.
I remember receiving a rare phone call from home (every camper is allowed two for the summer), and I told my mother of all this. The counselor took the phone afterwards, then chastised me for making her cry. I was then punished, though I can’t remember how. I imagine he must have done some smooth talking to my mother.
I remember that I had a day off, my mother, Phil (the man who would become my stepfather), and my grandmother picked me up and took me to the fair. We watched some cars being crushed by a monster truck, it was the most fun I had that summer.
July 4th stands out in particular. It was a free day, so I spent it sitting on the beach, observing the pyrotechnicians setting up for the fireworks show. They had announced that the nearby girls’ camp was going to be coming over for a dance that night. Of course, I didn’t care.
The sun had set when a girl had walked over to me, sitting alone there on the beach. She asked what I was doing, to which I replied, “Nothing.” I was feeling a mix of anxiety and apathy, as was the norm when speaking to that mysterious animal known as a girl. She said something along the lines that that was no fun and hauled me off to the dance.
I don’t remember much from the evening after that, I know we danced, and talked. I know that I had a pleasant time. I lost track of her sometime during the fireworks show. But I was seven and pretty lights and colors were in the sky, so I didn’t really care. I remember this because for a short time on that day in my childhood, I felt normal.
There were a couple camping trips during camp, where we loaded up the canoes and headed into the lake. Paddling through Trout Lake, down Trout River, into Leech Lake (pleasant place, a shallow little body of water that was more of a swamp, full of, you guessed it, leeches, which I took great care not to fall into), across many more bodies of water I forgot the name of. I remember we arrived in Rice Lake, which had been lined with blossoming trees, so all the leaves, seeds, and blossoms fell into the lake, giving it the illusion of being filled with rice. We camped on a tiny island, and I got the opportunity to crap in a hole that I dug myself.
Eventually, it came to an end with a speech by the head counselor (who I never saw during the summer). Some of the campers wept with sorrow over having to leave. As you might imagine, I was more than happy to leave the place behind. My parents had bought me a plane ticket home, so I took my first plane ride ever. It was actually pretty fun. I suppose I was too young to be afraid of flying.
They called before the next summer and asked if I’d like to return to Red Arrow Camp. I respectfully declined.