I was thinking the other day about the various summer camps I’d attended during my middle and high school years; as you might expect, there was quite the mixture of sports and other pursuits, each memorable in their own way. I think I learned how to play frisbee golf at one; I know for sure I mastered swimming at another. I joined my first swim team at twelve — I was a late bloomer, competition-wise — and did a six-week attempt at trying to become a springboard diver when I was seventeen.
A succession of soccer camps were sprinkled in there as well, a nod to the fact that my father had spent his formative years in Europe. While I excelled at swimming, soccer was a bit harder for me to get into, though I did have the incredible opportunity to attend a special one-week camp in New York hosted by an insanely talented player from Brazil who was just coming off of a successful World Cup run. Much like swimming, I still follow soccer and carve out the time to watch the major competitions when they appear on the calendar; my wife will tell you the television rarely tunes away when the World Cup is in progress.
Then there was the summer of Chicken Pox, the one where all ten of us who had shared a shuttle van to Camp Something-or-other in Freeport contracted the virus from a guy who’d unwittingly picked it up from his younger brother. I spent ten days at home, every square inch of my body covered in itchy boils I was implored not to scratch; it hadn’t helped it was the dead of July, hotter than the hinges at a time when air conditioning was something only people in Florida had access to. I’ve often wondered if it would have been easier to handle had the internet been around; binge watching Miraculous Ladybug or Star Trek would have certainly taken my mind off of the misery.
More than a few weeks were spent at Camp Hinds pursuing the seemingly endless series of Merit Badges I’d needed for my Eagle Scout award. Spending the night in an old Army surplus tent has its own unique attraction, one that I still remember with great fondness; the friendships I made during those summers remained strong right up until we all scattered to the four winds after graduation. My favorite week, of course, was the one-and-only time they offered Aquatics Week; spending nearly the entire day, from sunrise to sunset, in, on, or around the water was like being in heaven for a swimmer like me. I’m not sure if I should admit this, but I changed into my swimsuit the Sunday I arrived and didn’t change back out of it again until my parents picked me up the following Saturday. I’d hoped to get quite a tan that week, too, which was something of a rarity for a competitive swimmer in Maine as most of our pools are indoors. It went horribly awry, though, for a day at the beach without sunscreen turned me into a bright red boiled lobster, making even soft cotton sheets feel like torture.
I’m not sure what camps are like these days; honestly, the sorts of activities available to us back then are probably considered passé by today’s teens. Still, the experiences left an indelible mark on me in so many ways, and I learned things about myself while attending that I’m not sure would have been possible elsewhere. College is kind of like that, too, but I’ll save those horror stories for another day…