The Sunday paper was filled with advertisements for summer camps. Sporting unpronounceable Native American names, there were sleep-away camps for every personality: There was a band camp and a foreign language camp and a camp for kids who loved spiders. There was a camp on Florida’s West Coast that promised “significant weight loss” for teen-aged girls and as a motivational tool this camp allowed the girls to go swimming with manatees; I wondered briefly what kind of parents would think that their fat daughter would find it motivating to swim with a manatee: (“But, Sweetie, think of how thin you’ll look!”)
What all of these disparate camps had in common was the promise that in the course of one summer children would learn “social skills that they will use forever.” They would learn teamwork and how to interact with strangers and how to appreciate diversity. They would learn tolerance and respect and networking. They would, in the course of one short summer, acquire the social skills that would make them successful, productive adults.
As I browsed through the ads I wondered if my lack of any discernible social skills is because my parents never sent me to sleep-away camp. If I had gone to camp would I be charming and glib and self-assured? Would I be able to make small talk with strangers? Would I hear the magic words that I have never yet heard in over 50 year of awkward social interaction: “Guy is here! Now the party can start!”
My parents, who had strong feelings about everything, had especially strong feeling about summer camp. “Why did you even have kids if all you want to do is get rid of them for the whole summer?” my mother asked Mrs. Clancy, the snooty socialite who lived across the street, knowing full well that the Clancy’s sent their two kids to camp every summer. “If you want something to build your kids’ character this summer have them get a job and make money,” my father told Mr. Clancy who was a Junior Vice President at the bank and liked to throw it around. My parents’ opinions did nothing to dissuade the Clancy’s from sending their kids to camp, it just ensured a frosty relationship between them and my parents.
Although my parents would have never considered sending me to camp, they had absolutely no qualms about threatening to do so, and throughout elementary and middle school this worked to keep me in line. Bad report card? Forgot to take the garbage out? Played Frisbee in the living room? “That’s it! You’re going to camp this summer, so help me!”
To make the threat more legitimate, Mom would have various camps mail brochures to her. She kept these brochures in reserve and on days when I was in disgrace she would put one or two in the mailbox and then make me get the mail. Then my teenaged sister, an eager accomplice, would add her two cents: “Did you hear that Bobby Boyle’s parents sent him to summer camp last year? While he was away they moved and didn’t tell him where.”
As a socially awkward teenager the threat of summer camp became even more intimidating. Listening to my classmates at Cardinal Gibbons High School I learned that summer camp was mainly an opportunity to have sex in the woods, a terrifying prospect for me. “I lost my virginity seven times last summer,” I heard Mary Beth Franklin tell Mary Jo Donato. Just the thought of potentially having sex in the woods was what motivated me to get my first summer job when I was 14.
Now, sighing, I put away the Sunday paper just as my partner walked in the room. “Did your parents ever send you away to camp?” I asked him.
He shook his head vehemently. “No,” he said, “but when I was bad they would threaten to.”