Cruel Summer

With summer in full swing, I thought this was a good time to reflect on all the summer camps I went to when I was a kid.

OK, I'm done.

Done, because reflecting on camps that I saw on television, in movies, heard in about in urban legends, etc., was all I really have. I never went to a summer camp and I'm not complaining, and although I've learned that summer camps-resident/sleepaway camps, whatever-were more of a thing on the east coast, they didn't really exist for me, or my friends, on the west coast. That's not to say we didn't have anything to do-we just figured it out on our own.

One of the things I learned once I became a parent, and my kids, first my son and then my daughter, had to have their summers mapped out for them. This meant summer camps, and summer plans. Not just had to have, NEEDED to have. Their days and weeks needed to be meticulously planned, coordinated with other friends and families, identified weeks and months ahead of time, put in spreadsheets, then executed with the precision of a space shuttle launch. Exactly like my summers as a kid, if exactly was defined as totally and completely opposite.

We didn't really have summer camps, because first, outside of films like Meatballs or Friday the 13th, camps as I mentioned earlier were just not a thing. It's not that our parents had the opportunities to send us to camp and chose not to, it's more like our parents didn't have those have opportunities (but wouldn't have sent us anyway).

Once summer started we were on our own. Sure, some families took trips; not my family, we went to ballgames, instead of traveling, unless you count 2 trips to Lake Tahoe nearly a decade apart (on the second it rained the entire time) and random trips to southern California meccas like Downey and San Bernadino (yeah, I know).

So what'd we do? After rolling out of bed in an empty house, powering down a bowl of Cheerios or maybe a Thomas's English Muffin, the day was ours, pristine and unplanned. A trip to the beach? Sure, if you didn't mind uncomfortable bus rides across town with the great unwashed. Most days meant bike rides to friends' houses, the Family Fun Center, Pizza Hut or 7/11 or Fosters Freeze. Wiffle ball, football in the street, back-to-back episodes of the Twilight Zone on Channel 5, or swimming at someone's house, even mine after my parents did the unthinkable and built a pool while I was in 7th grade.

No one-most of all, our parents-knew where we were, what we had planned, or where we were going, on any given day. No family coordination. No spreadsheets. As long as we were home when the streets light went on, it was all good. Very good.

I could go on, but I have to go pick up my daughter at theater camp.