Sleepaway Camp V

When I was a child, the world seemed a lot bigger. Mainly because I was very short. In the summer time, I went to summer day camp. A day camp in the city is a bizarre experience, because you're basically in some abandoned high school doing arts and crafts or listening to music for six hours, with a pool and playground sprinkled in there. One summer, my parents sent my sister to sleepaway camp for four weeks.

Four Weeks! That's a month! That's FOREVER as a kid! I remember when she left, I cried, which was odd because at the time, my sister piling into a van with some strange man and then disappearing for 4 months was what I wished for every night. But, y'know, life. Changes. All of that crap.

Anyway, she came back alive and the next summer, they sent me with her. I was a pretty smart kid -- I think. Growing up in New York with an intellectual mom and self-made dad gave me a unique perspective. For my wild imagination, I was pretty realistic. Put together the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy fairly early (thought I put on the act for my parents.) The only imaginary things I still believed in around 1994-1995 were Santa Claus and love (Ba-ZING!).

But when you take anyone out of their natural environment, their minds will play tricks on them. I remember one time, a kid from camp said he was afraid of Jason Voorhees. I'd never really thought much about Jason Voorhees or any other movie monster, mainly because those movies were set out in the 'burbs and the country. Imagine, for a moment, that Jason Voorhees did exist. Why would he come to New York, a city of 8 Million, get to my parents' apartment building, kill the concierge, climb 18 floors, knock down a metal door, and murder my family just to kill me? Seems like a waste of time. Particularly given I was an eleven year old boy who hadn't done anything to anyone.

But then, one night, I was at my grandparents house and watching TV on their back porch. It's late at night (probably 9:30), dark and crickets are chirping. And i keep hearing a rustling in the leaves. And i ran like hell. Cuz I realized I was in the countryside. Anyone could just reach into his ground level suburban home and grab me, or murder me, or worse!

(Interesting side note: my freshman year of college at Drexel in Philadelphia, I recall the other students being HORRIFIED of the loud police sirens at night. And I slept soundly.)

So there I am, plopped down in the middle of Camp Fuller in Wakefield, Rhode Island, in the woods. Worse, we didn't have cabins -- we had shacks with no windows or doors, just canvas flaps we had to roll down at night time. So I struggled to sleep with every cricket chirping, leaf rustling and raccoon scampering about outside.

Every camp has scary stories. Camp Fuller had three -- the Walker (some Ukrainian ex-counselor who killed kids and still stalked the grounds), Greenie (a camper who had been set on fire or something, and now lived in the woods, covered in moss and mold) and the 9 Indian Braves (a legend of Indian Braves killed out by the lake who would appear when it rained or something)

Do the math, that's 11 individual monster-ghosts haunting the woods. ELEVEN! Why stop at eleven? Who else ya got in the woods? Hitler? The Detroit Pistons? My former Chemistry Teacher, Mrs. Yang?! Rick Astley?! (actually, I'd have loved that.)

So with the Legion of Doom wandering the woods, I could barely sleep. Cuz think about it -- y'know why I didn't buy monsters like Jason Voorhees? Cuz I grew up in New York and I saw almost every type of freak -- but I never saw a monster in a hockey mask. But a violent Ukrainian? That wasn't just a menace in the woods, that was my parents' superintendent. And now he's lurking about the woods, ready to kill me just because I wanted to spend the summer learning how to sail.

So to the kids coming home from summer camp this summer, congrats on getting out alive. I hope you weren't tormented by Ukrainians or erections like I was those four weeks in Rhode Island. And remember that, like me, you're only a few short summers away from being able to spend it doing something really terrifying: working in the dementia ward of a nursing home.