I did not go to sleep away camp. Well, truthfully, my parents sent me once. It was the summer after eighth grade, when apparently girls are at their very meanest, and I went to Camp Hillel (of blessed memory) for the second month.
In the olden days, camp wasn’t like it is now. You either went the first month or the whole summer, not just the second month. Needless to say, it was a nightmare. I was not put in the bunk with the girls who were my “friends”; I was terribly homesick, and the boy I liked went out with someone else. On the plus side, it was also the summer I grew four inches and I was a size 6, so even though I was miserable, I was thin.
My husband, on the other hand, loved sleep-away camp. He was also at Camp Hillel when I was there, and he insists on telling our boys that the only girl who was my friend used to run around camp with a butterfly net.(In my defense, I have absolutely no recollection of this.) They all have a good laugh at that story, but ha ha, the joke is on them because their mother is the girl who was friends with the girl with the butterfly net.In any event, it seems that a lot of kids are lucky enough to go to sleep away camp for one month or both, and I consider myself blessed, not only because my boys go, but because they like it. This could be because boys are usually less cruel than girls are and/or because they have their father’s calm and friendly demeanor.
What I don’t understand is why, with the extremely high cost of camp, I need to spend so much money at the supermarket on snacks and beverages. Aren’t food and drink included in the cost of camp? When did my kid start eating sunflowers seeds or pizza flavored Pringles? One summer, I had to send up a George Forman grill and hot dogs. Seriously? You can grill in camp, but you don’t know how to use the toaster at home? This year, the camp instituted a no-food package rule.Basically this just makes it easier for all of the husbands who go up on weekends and are kind enough to bring various things up for other peoples kids. However, you can send food up with them on the first day of camp and bring snacks up on visiting day.So after several trips to the various purveyors of food and drink, we rented a U-Haul (also not included in the cost of camp) and loaded it up with cases of water, Gatorade, powerade and all of the other edible requests from our children we just cannot say no to.
Hope your kids are happy with whatever they are doing this summer!
Banji Latkin Ganchrow is a Teaneck resident and writer who enjoys traveling across the country by car with her husband and three sons. She is also the author of the blog holycrapimgonnabe40 and hopes to, one day, write a best-selling novel and appear on the Ellen Show.
By Banji Latkin Ganchrow
