When J was a kid, he attended a camp near here that he just loved. It was the seminal experience of his childhood. His kids, he was determined, would go to the same place. At first, I was completely against this, mostly because of the stories he told me of his camp adventures. One of my favourites was of how, every year, he’d help a good friend pass his swimming test by letting that friend hold onto his shoulder, unseen in the murky lake water, while they treaded water for the requisite time. So? you figure. Big deal – he helped a friend get a swimming badge. But no. The test was to be able to go water skiing.
I happy to report that the friend is still alive today.
As the kids got a bit older, he started telling me about how the camp had changed over the years and is now much safer. When my eldest nephew started attending and not only survived the experience, but loved it, I softened my stance.
So that is where Maya went to camp last year, and she too loved it. The stories she came home with demonstrated that it is safe, but in many ways is still the camp of J’s youth. It isn’t the sort of place where the kids are structured 16 hours a day and have archery and horseback riding, etc. There’s a fair amount of hanging about and goofing off. I actually consider this a good thing.
Not many kids from our city attend this camp. Last year, we showed up in the school parking lot looking for the bus and were surprised to see the place filled with parents and campers. Thankfully, we quickly determined that they were all going to a different camp. We finally found one other family. Their two and Maya made 3 kids in total. The ‘bus’ was half an hour late and turned out to be a minivan with a trailer for all their crap. The driver was an Israeli who worked at the camp and drove like an Israeli, so our kids were relieved to make it to camp alive.
This year, we arrived in the parking lot in time and quickly found the other family again. We settled in for a chat as the scheduled 10 am pick-up time arrived and the bus from the other camp roared in to disgorge and reload campers. No minivan, but we weren’t surprised.
The parking lot cleared and we continued to wait. To our surprise, another bus drove up. The driver wore a cap with our camp’s name on it. A whole bus for four children. As the other parents and I told our kids to hop on and chose which 6 seats they’d like to claim as theirs, J briefly got all adult-like and responsible and phoned the camp to see how many kids they expected. They couldn’t have sent a bus for four kids, could they? The person who answered the phone told him that they expected “eight to twelve” children at the pick-up. “Don’t you have a list of who is coming?” he asked. They said they’d get back to him on that.
So while he waited for the return call, he headed over to the other parking lot to look for the missing 4-8 kids. There were no more kids. The camp guy called back to say he could not access their database and had no more information, so we waved off our children, amid jokes about their large personalities, or perhaps split personalities, turning them into 8-12 children.
From now on, J says when people ask him how many kids we have, he plans to answer, “Two to four.”
