Summer Reflection (Twenty-One Years Later)
While going through a bag of miscellanea from my past that made its way through two of my parents’ moves and remains in the back of one of their closets, I came across a yearbook from my last summer at a fairly well-known New England Jewish summer camp.
(I won’t name the camp since it has likely changed a lot in the last 21 years and, I assume, been a life changing place for the kids for whom its style worked. I was, however, not one of those kids.)
Now, it should be noted that I was an awkward teenager, and very much a late bloomer in some ways. I wasn’t particularly socially adept, nor was I even a little bit athletic or sexually experienced on any level. But there weren’t camps for kids who liked comic books and loud music and this camp was the closest to my house and I had a friend there, so that is where I landed for three summers, by choice. And for three summers I was…given nicknames I didn’t particularly like, excluded from groups, pranked in disgusting ways, embarrassed publicly by other campers and, on rare but still painful occasions, by counselors. (That last one is particularly painful in retrospect.) Hell, they made fun of me IN THE DAMN YEARBOOK I JUST FOUND. (The printed part, not the signatures!)
Now, you might be wondering…why don’t I just throw the thing away (or burn it) and concentrate on the fact that that I made it through and am living a great life with family and friends and colleagues and students who love me and understand and accept me? I am, of course, doing all of that (haven’t gotten to the burning yet but…it’s coming), but I wanted to put an important note of realization out there.
When I used to think about my time at this camp, I tended to — directly and indirectly — blame myself for my bad time and forced square pegs into round holes to try to convince myself that I loved it there. This is because in my circles camp is kind of a thing you are SUPPOSED to love and cherish. And if everything done to me was my fault, then I could still do that.
But that is some top quality, Stockholm Syndrome-y, mentally backward, certified grade-A BULLSHIT.
Look, we were all awkward teenagers and sleep away camp is an awkward concept no matter who you are, especially in the Jewish world (where the idea that Jewish camp is a way to repopulate after the Holocaust is still a running narrative). Was I loud and periodically obnoxious? Absolutely. Was that a reason to turn me into a punching bag, literally and figuratively, and make me an outcast not just in the moment, but preserved in writing for posterity? Not even fucking close.
How much of our lives do we spend trying to understand the missteps of our past? Why do we remember our wins in black and white and our mistakes in technicolor? And most importantly, why do we let the assholes off the hook for what they do to us?
I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but what this unwelcome trip down memory lane has taught me is this: sometimes people, especially teenagers, are just dicks. And sometimes you just aren’t built for the situations you find yourself in when you find yourself in them. And both of those things aren’t your fault and aren’t worth carrying with you for minutes, let alone decades.
Hatred bores a hole in your heart.
Self-hatred bores a hole in your soul.
Don’t let it.
(PS: and if you’re a parent of a camp-aged kid, make damn sure the place you send them is the right fit for the kid you have. Because they probably won’t be able to process if wasn’t a good fit until they’re in their mid-30s.)
