My first summer camp

THE OWL by Layla Edwards

Sunday, September 2, 2006

“My first summer camp”

The night sky above the dark trees is just subtly lighter than the trees, so I guess dawn is about to break sometime soon. I can see the outline of the dark trees.

I got snail mail from my friend Basha back in New York City and when I opened it up, it was an article from the NY Times Book Review about Nora Ephron’s new book of personal essays about her life. It was so much fun to read. I have not read anything in newsprint for so long. It was so much fun that someone had selected out something they thought you would enjoy reading, and to sit at dining table with soda on ice when I got back from swim pool and read it.

Basha and I met when we both had just turned 30. I had just started writing then. I had been writing for almost a year and I remember when we went to the Museum of Modern Art together and had lunch in their sculpture garden, I asked Basha if she wanted to hear one of my stories. I had just written one and I wanted to try it out. I read it to her at our table in the sculpture garden.

It was about the first camp I had gone to when I was 12 years old. And the interesting thing about that camp I discovered when I wrote the story, was it had no rules, no rules at all.

This didn’t seem remarkable to me when I was 12 years old, it seemed utterly natural for me to be in a place with no rules at all. It was my first time away from home, I was there for the month of July. There was even a cattle pond for swimming, the camp took place in a rundown farm in Vermont, and there were no rules about swimming either. Anyone could go to the "lake" and go for a swim by themself whenever they felt like it. There was no lifeguard. There were no activities you had to go to. Activities were available if you wanted to go. A range of them.

The girls in my bunk went to no activities. They stayed in the bunk and played Jacks. But I went to archery, I liked that. I didn’t know why they stayed in the bunk and played Jacks instead of going to activities, but I knew they looked down on me for going to activities.

There was an emotional drama for me at that camp because I had only gone there because I wanted to be with Betsy. My best friend from babyhood, Betsy, went every single summer and raved about it all the time, and told me I had to go, it is so wonderful. And finally the summer I was 12, I asked my parents, and they said you can go for the month of July. And my father sent off the check for 80 dollars, and duffle bag was located, and my mother wrote my name with black indelible ink on strips of fabric and sewed it on all the clothes I was taking to camp. They sent a list, two pairs of shorts, two long pants, bathing suit, two tops, etc.

And then the great day came, and my parents took me to Grand Central Station where everyone was lined up for the train taking them to camp. And we found the line for the train to take me to camp. And there was Betsy. And on the train ride I sat next to her. Altho the seat was turned around so she could sit with her other friends from camp.

So there was 4 of us sitting together. And when we got there I took the top bunk above Betsy. And after that Betsy never spoke to me again for the rest of her life. That train ride up to camp was the last time I sat next to her. The great love of my life since I had been a baby, we had learned how to walk together, ended on that train ride up to camp, where I sat on one side of Betsy and her best friends from camp sat on the other side.

I did not measure up.

I didn’t realize it on the train ride. I was so excited and thrilled and loved every instant of what was happening around me, already I loved camp. And it took a while for it to dawn on me at camp too. Altho as you can imagine Betsy quickly changed her bed. Sairy Anne arrived and I slept above Sairy Ann, Betsy moved as far away from me as she could get. She was totally embarrassed to be associated with me. I don’t know how it dawned on me. I guess I would find myself alone with her, and for first time in my life find myself uncomfortable with her and tongue-tied. She was giving every impression of not liking me and not wanting to be with me. And after a while I stopped trying.

It was a new world to me, this world of the clique, and some were in it, and some were not. And clearly Betsy was one of the top girls in the clique. She wasn’t the leader, but she was totally accepted in it, she was part of it. The bunk had 12 girls, not every girl was in the clique, altho most of them came year after year like Betsy. I’d guess 5 girls were in the clique, everyone else was excluded. But that is what a pecking order is. There is the leader of the clique, the rest of the clique is her accolades. And the rest of us are nothing. I had not made the transformation to teen-ager yet. My mind was still child’s mind. So I found it highly amusing I was nothing and the clique was everything. Not amused so much as interesting. I was in a new world, it was a brand new adventure, and I loved everything about my brand new adventure. That there was a clique and I was nothing, was just another interesting thing about this new adventure.

I was upset about losing Betsy, and I don’t think I accepted it. I accepted it that at camp she would have nothing to do with me, but I would not believe our friendship was over. I think I assumed back in the city it would return. Because I think I began a diary the following year, it only had 3 entries in it, and one of them was about Betsy. I wrote “something is wrong in our friendship.” I was disturbed and trying to understand it. The idea that Betsy had changed her feelings for me was incomprehensible. Because it was my very first experience of anyone changing their feelings towards me. I didn’t know such a thing happened. I just assumed when you love someone you love them forever, that that is the nature of love, that the joy of your heart is always the joy of your heart.

I wasn’t bothered about the clique excluding me, altho I knew it made a difference to Betsy, that this is why she wouldn’t talk to me at camp. I had zero feelings about the clique on my own. The idea of a clique is that they are infinitely desirable and superior to the rest of us. And there were girls in my bunk who saw them that way, and were very upset they were excluded from the clique, but I didn’t get it.

“Why are you so upset?” I said.

“Because they won’t let me in the clique.”

“We'll just form our own clique” I said, trying to be helpful.

There were 4 of them. It was on the stairwell. They were all upset about being excluded from the clique, they were commiserating. There were tears. If they wanted to be in a clique so badly, I thought we should form our own. But of course it upset them when I said that. Because they were so upset they were hanging out with someone who was so out of it, she didn’t even know not being allowed in the clique was fate worse than death. After that even those who were excluded from the clique refused to talk to me. I was bottom of the barrel.

I could have been one with the ones unhappy about not being in the clique if only I had known I was supposed to be unhappy. So the clique stayed in the bunk instead of going to activities and played Jacks. And the ones excluded from the clique hung out on the staircase and cried. And I went to archery, and started to get good at it. I was having a ball at camp.

I even had a ball at social activities. On Friday nights there was dance at the Sugar House. It had been a working farm, that is where the maple syrup used to be made. The Friday night party at the Sugar House meant the girls would all sit on chairs next to each other, and the boys would choose which one they wanted to ask to dance. I thought this was a lot of fun. The boys would walk up and down trying to decide who they wanted to choose. I giggled to the girl next to me “it’s as if we are the candy in the candy store, and they are trying to decide which one they want.”

The girl moved her chair away from me. It bothered the girls not in the clique very much that they were never chosen, only the girls in the clique were chosen. But I just thought it was a new fun game at camp, being the candy in the candy store. I could care less whether I was chosen or not, I just liked being in the game.

Of course there were great games at that camp else I would not have loved it so much. “Capture The White Flag” was an ecstasy, an adventure game in fields and woods, I loved it. And “Nose Bag Dramatics,” which we played in the barn was a lot of fun too. And on “Amateur Talent Night,” I was the only one from my bunk who volunteered. I got up and threw myself all over the stage in my own interpretative modern dance. I made it up. I thought I did great. I had no idea that for “Amateur Talent Night” you were supposed to have talent, and be up there and demonstrate your talent. I thought it was for anyone who wanted to do anything on the stage. The faces on the girls from my bunk when I finished and went back to my place were a sight. You never saw so much disgust in one place. It did not dim my enthusiasm, I overlooked it. “Why don’t you get up and do something, it’s fun” I told them.

When we went huckleberry picking in the field, the counselor let us take off our clothes and pick berries in our underpants. When we went to the stream to wash our clothes we were allowed to wash our clothes naked and swim in the stream. It was a great camp. I had a great time. One night we all waited till we had been in bed, and counselors were coming around on O.D. to check on us, and then we all ran away. And I hid in the baseball field. And it was so exciting when the counselor found me and flashed his flashlight on me. I had lain there breathless in the dark when I saw the flashlight in the distance. I think that was the highest adventure of all.

Altho it was fun putting on a dress and being driven in the truck to Marlboro for a square dance. I loved square dancing.

On Visiting Day in the middle of the summer all the parents drove up from New York, and my parents drove from our summer house in Adirondacks to pick me up and take me back to Old Forge.

“I had a wonderful time at camp; next year I want to go for two months” I said. “As soon as we get back to NYC Daddy,” I said, “you write out the check for two months.”

It was the last summer of my innocence. After that I descended into image. Ego got whole control of my mind. And it took “A Course In Miracles,” when I was in Tucson, to give me back my innocence.

As soon as we got back to NYC my father, per my request, did send off the check for two months. But the owner of the camp, an old man, wrote instead of having camp this summer he and his wife are going on a trip to Mexico and are inviting some of the girls in the oldest bunk to go, and I am one of the ones invited. I remembered the owner of the camp, he seemed like a nice man. His wife didn’t like me. But of course he did not see me thru the eyes of the 12 year old girls in my bunk, all he saw was the joyous happy girl.

I said to my father “I don’t want to go to Mexico, I want to go to camp, find another one then.”

And so another one was found for me. This one was run by two teachers and it was all rules. But I was 13 when I arrived, I was a different person. I knew that all that mattered in life was being popular and having a boyfriend and I turned myself inside out to accomplish it.....