Every now and then I’ll see some kind of advertisement about sending kids to a Sleepaway Camp for a couple of weeks during the summer.When I see those advertisements, I start to remember the one and only sleepaway camp that I went to as a child. My parents wanted to go on a brief vacation without the kids, and they signed us all up to go to a camp that was out in the country somewhere. I don’t even know where it was. I just remember my mother taking us to a church and dropping us off with sleeping bags and suitcases and being told we were being sent to a sleepaway camp for two weeks.
I was only nine years old at the time, and I guess I really didn’t care too much, as long as I had my two sisters with me. It was a co-ed camp and we all slept on the floor of a really big tent, with a flap that separated the boys from the girls. The camp was being run by a husband and wife team and they also slept in the tent, but they had an air mattress to sleep on!
We swam and bathed in a nearby stream, had to use outhouses, and tried our hands at archery. There was one day when we were led around on a small pony. I remember that there was a building that was the food hall and we were served three meals a day. To be perfectly honest I really don’t remember very much about that camp other than the fact that I really hated sleeping on the wood floor with only a sleeping bag for cushioning!
When my sons were younger I sent away for Camp Information for the various nearby camps to see if I could find one that they would enjoy attending. I was hoping to find a fun camp that would provide them with some positive experiences in their youth. When I talked with them about it they were adamant that they only wanted to go to day camp so that they could come home every night. They were having trouble with bullying and did not want to chance having bully problems at sleepaway camp as well. I really can’t say that I blame them for that, so we settled for day camp for their summers.
