After my freshman year in college, I was hired as a counselor at an overnight camp in Connecticut. When I went for the interview in a New York City office, I mentioned my skills as a self-taught archer. They didn’t have an archery program but created one on the spot and offered me a fifty dollar premium. I accepted, my summer job secured.
What I did not know about camp culture was that most campers had been coming for years, and each year was a reunion with longtime friends. I had never attended overnight camp. I spent time with my cousins in my grandparents’ backyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey or afternoons at Morgan Beach in Glen Cove, Long Island, where my other grandparents lived.
At this summer camp hidden in the suburban hills of Connecticut, I was an outsider.
As part of my duties, I was counselor of a girls’ cabin. My co-counselor was also an alumna. Two of the campers in my cabin, pre-teen twins Allison and Amanda (not their real names) were granddaughters of the owners.
Most of the campers came from the prosperous suburbs of Connecticut, New York, or Long Island. The twins brought two trunks each for the summer, full of different color mohair sweaters, the current fashion rage. Some still had price tags attached, never used the entire summer, except for a few times on the cooler nights of late August.
The twins didn’t follow the rules that I had been told about in my orientation. Now that I look back at it, I realize that they were allowed to bully me. They always had the backup of the head counselors, employees of their grandparents and probably long-time campers themselves. They could say anything at all to me—and they did—without consequence.
They reported me—probably in the form of whining—to their grandparents if I tried to get them to sweep the cabin when it was their turn.
And yes, I got short-sheeted, a summer camp ritual. They snorted like little hyenas under their covers.
Late one night, I heard a commotion at another cabin and walked over to check it out. The counselor was yelling at the girls and even blew her whistle at them. I entered and asked if I could help out. I will never forget how the counselor looked at me in anger and told me to get out of there. So much for camp spirit.
On visiting day, the mother of my co-counselor introduced herself. We sat down on the cabin steps to chat while I waited for parents to come by to ask questions and inspect the premises. Her daughter had made friends with another counselor. The mom looked at them and said with love in her voice, “Friends for life . . . . “
Those words stung me, although they were not intended to. My own co-counselor did not see me as a friend.
I couldn’t seem to find a way in, anywhere, with the kids, the staff, the owners.
I had no means to compare this place with any other previous experience in my life. I have a feeling it was not untypical of a particular genre of camp. It was the wrong place for me, a studious and serious young lady from a modest family background, a student at a state college, my mom a teacher, my dad a machinist.
I left to enter my sophomore year of college where I felt at home in my study carrel at the library, rewarded for my efforts and a safe distance from my unhappy summer experience.
The next summer, I got a job as a waitress at a five-and-ten lunch counter. My customers were appreciative in return for my diligent attention to their needs. I brought the coffee and slice of apple pie to the office worker on his break. He left his tip under the saucer. Win-Win.
Years later, I found out that the camp property had been sold and transformed into a singles retreat. The cabins, the lakefront, expansive acreage, the rustic dining hall, all seemed perfect for a young adult overnight playground in the country, an hour or so drive from New York City. The new owners retrofitted the property to accommodate the lifestyle of the young and nubile with water volleyball, kayaks, trampolines, aerobics lessons, bands for nighttime entertainment. Good for them to catch the wave of social change and let go of the old ways that were losing ground and profit margins.
My parents had met at a Catskills hotel in the 1940s. A few weeks in the summer is all it takes to kindle a romance that leads to marriage. Their first date was in a rowboat on the lake. The new iteration of the summer vacation tailored for search of a mate worked quite well before internet dating.
Setting nostalgia aside, my most vivid memory of the camp will forever be the bratty twins who made my life miserable. But I needed the summer job on my resume and stuck with it.
But I do wonder if the camp—whether for children or adults—kept my archery range.
(random camp photo from Internet)
As a lifelong camp director, your experience saddens me. For my whole career, I tried to make camp a positive experience for both counselors and kids. I’m sure it wasn’t perfect for everyone but I did the best I could to make it happen. On the other hand, I did meet more than my share of those who acted like your entitled twins!!
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Thank you Judi for bringing up the awesomeness of Camp Menorah. To send my children there was a healing experience for me, from toddlers to rising through the ranks to try to save the camp. The spirit that you nurtured will always live on!
Sad story, Barrie. You were an innocent thrown to the wolves. There were a large number of brats at my all girls’ Catholic high school. After graduation, my first job at a life insurance agency was paradise in comparison.
Thank you Hilary. The camp was like one big clique, and I was a misfit from the first, not having been brought up in the prevailing lifestyle. Now it’s just another life experience, grist for the life lesson mill.
My camp experiences were derived courtesy of the (then Herald Tribune) Fresh Air Fund, where I spent four full summers and a portion of a fifth. They were timely, in the midst of civil rights struggles (campers were drawn from underprivileged NYC families.) Applicable and enduring, as one camp drew upon both campers and staff with disabilities, and not. There I learned valuable life-long lessons. Most memorable moment? Meeting a camper at a NYC march led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Such were my 60’s camp memories.
That’s a whole other experience, and you were fortunate to have it, where values are forged and strengthened. Thank you for bringing this out, in contrast to my own negative experience.
I never went to overnight camp but my 3 children all went & loved it. They stayed in touch with the friends they made & had reunions with the councellors. In fact, there is a reunion this weekend. Also 2of my children worked at camp for a few years. Sorry you had such a bad experience. My kids loved overnight camp many years ago.
Yes, many have stayed connected with their camp community and have made long-term friendships. Two counselors at the camp I worked at got married. I guess I missed the boat when it came to a positive experience, but my kids went to overnight camp for a couple of years each and liked it just fine. One was a little farm camp down Cape Cod run by two sisters, a very sweet place.
Once again you share insight into your earlier life with words that make it come alive.
I don’t have fond memories of the private day camp I went to, seems like there is a theme here, “mean girls” abound. I went to a Jewish Federation overnight camp which I abhorred, but there is was the counselors, rather than the campers, that were the “mean girls.” Do I sense a theme?
Thank you for continuing to entertain and enlighten us. What a treasure these stories will be for you 6 grandchildren to read!
Miss you.
Thank you Lisa for your comments about camp life, something that I didn’t fit into very well either.
One thing I wasn’t prepared for — and which no one warned me about — was how the weather turned in mid-August. Nights were freezing, frost on the grass in the morning!
Hope to talk to you in September sometime 🍁
This story strikes close to home for me, Barrie. My camp career began at age 5 for 10 days of sleep away. A family friend’s daughter was the counselor, but that did not keep me from being horribly home sick. I attended this camp and another camp after that until the age 13. At that point, I could become a junior counselor. I never made any lifelong friendships as I was from a rural area and most campers were from Baltimore or Washington, DC. and could see each other during the year.
As an adult I let my kids decide if sleep away camp was for them. My daughter spent one session at camp and decided against it.
I know people that had a wonderful camp experience. Not me.
Thanks Jan for sharing your experiences. I guess there are two kinds of people in the world, camp lovers and then the round pegs in the square holes, or something like that.
So sorry you had such an awful camp experience. It’s difficult enough going into a situation where everyone has known each other for a long time, and you are the outsider, but they should have been way more welcoming. What a nightmare!
It was a way of life that was alien to me. But then again, not everyone had grandparents that lived near the beach in Glen Cove and a horde of cousins around all the time!
Barrie,
Your closing lines confirmed the feeling I got while barely into your story. What a nightmare ! You were so set up and freezed out. All I can say is that it’s a good thing that the expert archer didn’t get righteously indignant and decide to aim her arrows……mmm nevermind. It is however a great description of the building tension that results from being in the wrong place with the wrong crew. Bizzare in a way how that setting completely morphed into a singles play land. Of course the archery range remained. Cupid’s arrows were flying everywhere. Excellent story.
Frank Armitage