Join Me in Snarkville

Before I begin, I have to tell you that as a kid I loved from the deepest parts of my heart summer camp.  Yes, sleep away summer camp and day camp alike.  I loved it all.  I loved it with the swimming in the middle of the day, the odd smell of sunscreen and sweat, and I loved the camp games.  This is really good since I spent much of my growing up summers in various camps.  I’d go to church camp, girl scout camp, YMCA camp, you’ve got a camp and I was there.  While some might say this was because my parents worked, I have to say that I loved camp enough that I never minded it.

Actually, that’s not 100% true, there was one thing that annoyed me about camp.  It was the swimming.  You see, in addition to all my camps to go to, I also had summers and summers of private swimming lessons.  Now, I wasn’t a great swimmer, but I was ahead of my years in ability and know-how.  However, by a certain age in camp, we were expected to swim daily (or maybe it was weekly — who remembers) and at the beginning of the summer they’d give us a swim test to attest to our abilities and group us for group swim lessons.  The problem was that I always felt that I was pushed into a level lower than my actual ability.  (not the camp’s fault really, they tended to put me in the most advanced group, but lower than the group of jr. lifeguards — because of my age — I had the skills, just not the years.  I was outraged by the injustice of it all.)  Finally, in one of my last years, I stood up for myself and cut a deal that if I could do the butterfly stroke across the pool, I’d be moved up.  I did and they did — I shut up for a bit.

So, it was with glee and joy that I found a day camp for Duke this summer.  You may remember that we are heading into those dreaded, less cute, school years; and as such, we have our first summer vacation this year.  In a fit of fear that Duke would spend his summer bonding with Playhouse Disney and PBSKids on TV, I searched for a summer camp for him.  When I was done, I’d signed him up for a summer of weekly themed fun — filled with my own excitement.

For weeks we’ve been talking about how much fun camp will be and how much fun Duke was going to have.  I worried that he might not like camp like I did.  I worried that he’d hate it and I’d never get him back into the joys of camp.

I need not fear.  We walked into camp this morning and Duke took a look around.  He was off on his own in minutes and barely slowed to give me a kiss goodbye.  When I picked him up from camp, he wasn’t ready to go home yet.  But the best part?

“So what did you do today in camp?”

“Mama, on Friday I get to go SWIMMING.”

Yup, nothing’s changed, the room still smells the same; the games are the same; the special events are the same…and best of all — there is SWIMMING on Fridays!  But there’s no swim test for his age group!