As I approach my 19th summer, I also approach my 10th summer as a part of the wonderful family known as “The Camp Fitch Bunch." Hailing on the shores of Lake Erie, Camp Fitch has served as my home away from home for nearly a decade. The staff, which I joined several years back, has been with me through all the crazy, scary, and sometimes misguided, years of my adolescence.
As a child (and even a bit today) when people ask how I spend my summers, I immediately launch into a montage of stories, ranging from sunrise kayak trips and late night bonfires on the beach, to winning the camp Olympics and having my campers dress me up on Wacky Wednesdays. Though the stories are unique to me, the experiences are not. Anyone who has ever spent their summers at sleep-away camp they would agree with me in saying that those years were life-changing. You gain friendships, memories, and life lessons that stick with you for an eternity.
Opposition to this fine institution may not see it this way. People who never got the glorious opportunity that many others and myself did, see camp as an excuse for parents to dump their kids somewhere all summer, and picture the staff as uninterested teenagers, looking for a way to make a quick buck.
I honestly pity those people, but more importantly, I mourn for their children, who are deprived of this enriching opportunity. Camp taught me things my parents, siblings, and teachers never could.
For one, it taught me how to make genuine friends. These people see you first thing every morning and last thing every night. Yet, they’re still going to be your friends, even when your bed head resembles the bride of Frankenstein and you’re covered in mud/paint/lake water. Why? Because they learned to love you for your funny jokes and sweet personality, not for what you look like or the clothes you wear.
Camp also taught me how to test my fears, and to trust people. Sitting on top of the climbing wall at age 13, I turned to my counselor Becky, who gave me a final pep talk before I went off the zip line for the very first time. Despite my steadily increasing fear of heights and my lack of confidence in my abilities, I trusted Becky. I believed in her judgment and knew she was always looking out for my best interests. Just as she promised, I lived, and more importantly, I enjoyed every moment of it.
Now the tides have turned and I am in Becky’s position, giving my kids encouragement as they take on water skiing, or just sitting with them at 3 A.M. during their first ever night away from home.
Sure, there are days when it's thunder storming, all of your campers have the stomach bug, and you haven’t slept more than six hours each night, that you begin to question why you keep coming back. But, it’s the nights I come home to all of my kids snuggling in one bed (usually mine), or when they’re pounding on the dining hall tables, chanting the legendary camp songs, that I am reminded I am giving these kids an opportunity they’ll never have anywhere else in the world. To be utterly and completely, themselves, enjoying every pure moment of happiness.
When they return to school in the fall, I am positive they’re going to bore their friends to death with the same stories of “the time Susan fell into the creek during a hike” or “when that one silly counselor wore their clothes backwards all day," just like I did as a kid.
With all that being said, I better see everyone heading back to relive his or her glory days at camp this summer.
