My parents sent me to summer camp every year. It was usually a week, sometimes two weeks, and I never once said, "Can I go to summer camp, can I please?," so I think they enjoyed the week without me more than I enjoyed summer camp. Most years, anyway.
The best part of summer camp was an hour and a half daily when all the kids got to hang out at the main building, or on the basketball courts right outside.
I wasn't there. It was easy to sneak away and there were bullies to avoid, so I usually spent that hour and a half having fun instead, in the woods, climbing trees, telling myself stories, and eating ferns that tasted like licorice.
♦ ♦ ♦
One summer at camp, in early adolescence or on the cusp, I stayed out of the woods long enough to have an almost-girlfriend. Her name was Anita, and I liked her, and she liked me. We didn’t make out, we only kissed twice, and the second one was a kiss goodbye, but she was a real live girl who spent some of her time with me, by choice. That had never happened before.
We lived hundreds of miles apart, so I knew I'd never see her again, but when camp ended we exchanged addresses. We sent each other a few letters, and then stopped, of course. Now I remember almost nothing about Anita except her name. She hasn't been even briefly on my mind in years, perhaps decades — but she mattered to me that summer.
On the drive home from camp, my parents asked whether I’d had a fun week away, and I answered their questions. I told them about the so-so food, and the bugs in the cabin, and complained that there’d been too much Bible and too much God … and I told them about Anita.
Mom and Dad listened as I prattled on. Mom didn't say anything, and Dad said only this, about my beloved girl from camp: “Anita, huh? The same name as your grandmother. I wonder what that means?”
Until Dad said what Dad said, I'd been pleased with myself — super-shy kid goes to summer camp, reinvents himself as a little ladies’ man, and actually holds hands with a girl? This was my greatest accomplishment so far in life!But wait, was I not allowed to like any girl who shared my grandmother’s first name? Was I also supposed to avoid girls who had my mother’s name? My sisters’ names? What about cousins?
I was just a kid, and hadn’t yet heard of Oedipus Rex, let alone GrandOedipus Rex, but
what my dad was implying seemed downright freaky. To me, Anita was Anita, and my grandmother was ‘Grandma’. I hadn’t
even noticed that they had the same name.
What my father said pissed me off, obviously — it’s fifty years later and I’m still annoyed.
I know, of course, that it was just my dad not knowing what to say, so he made a lame wisecrack. That's what dads do. I'm not a dad, but I do that, too. The experience didn't warp me, or make me into an axe murderer. But I understood that my first big crush was a joke to my old man.
And from that day to this, it was the last time I was simply open and honest with my parents about anything that mattered to me. After that, always there was a moment or a month of hesitation, as I calculated the risks: If I tell them, will I be scolded? Will I get a wisecrack, or a Bible verse? Will I get anything helpful from being straightforward with Mom & Dad?
The answer was usually nope, so there's a lot about me that they never knew.
7/14/2021
One of the weirdest things I saw when I moved out of NJ were ads for "Vacation Bible School." Like, church-sponsored summer camps, like you describe. Wild shit that I never saw where I was from.
ReplyDeleteYou lucky schmuck.
DeleteThat isn't all that harrowing what your father said, but I bet it was when you were a kid.
ReplyDeleteTwo friends of mine got married, Joe and Jo Ann, and I wonder what your father would say.
ReplyDeletePerverts.
DeleteMy parents are also Joe and JoAnn. No joke.
DeletePerverts.
Delete