I way a day camper, through and through, so it’s not a given that I would be nostalgic for the color wars and bed checks depicted in Laurie Susan Kahn’s Sleepaway.
Day camp had its own charms: For a few summers, my mom worked in the building next door. After years of jealousy of the kids with stay-at-home moms who could go home for lunch in elementary school, I felt special when my working mom picked me up fr0m camp and took me out to lunch. Instead of our own camp songs, at day camp I learned all the words to the songs in Grease (the rite of every pre-teen girl–we didn’t figure out until years later how dirty those lyrics were). We didn’t have a fire to tell ghost stories in front of, so we would try to sit as still as possible in the racquetball courts, hoping the motion sensors wouldn’t detect us and the lights would turn off. My lanyards eventually rivaled those of even the most entrenched sleepaway camper–I could do the box, the barrel, the double box and barrel, and even the elusive triple box and barrel.
So no, I never went to sleepaway camp. But I feel like I did. I love any kids’ movie set at camp–remember the beginning of The Parent Trap, when Lindsay Lohan (or Hayley Mills, if you prefer the original) finds her long-lost twin at camp in Maine? Last summer, my camp fix was ABC Family’s brilliant TV show Huge, set at a weight loss camp for teens. And the This American Life episode on camp is one of the show’s best. Camp is universal, even for people who never experienced it. This is why I like Sleepaway so much–finally, I’m privy to the secret rituals of those sleepaway camp girls, with their s’mores, canoes, camp socials, and lifelong friendships.
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