Ten Years Later
I can't believe that it's been ten years since I spent my last summer as a counselor at Nah-Jee-Wah. For those of you who think I might have a speech impediment (or typing impediment, I guess), Nah-Jee-Wah is a New Jersey "Y" camp located in Milford, PA. The camp is for children aged 6-11 (or so). I had always assumed that this was some sort of Indian name, but clearly I'm some sort of paleskin racist jerk. The name actually comes from what the people who named it thought a young child would sounds like when he/she said "New Jersey Y." I wish I were kidding.
Incidentally (but not coincidentally), it's been ten years since I graduated college as well, which frankly is far more surreal than the camp thing. Camp never felt like one of those things that I'd do forever. I knew eventually that I'd have to get a real job that didn't give me summers off, and my time there would end.* But being in school seemed like something interminable. I remember driving out of the parking lot on the last day of high school and blasting Alice Cooper's "School's Out," but that fact is that it wasn't out forever. Not even close. At that time, I wanted to be an attorney (I know, I'm very creative with my "what I want to be when I grow up" choices), which meant that I would have potentially had seven more years ahead of me when I drove away from that horrible building with the pastel paneling out front.
*This is not entirely true. There was a long period of time that I thought I was going to be a school teacher. I even had a reasonably permanent substitute teaching gig during the first year that I was out of school. In hindsight, I've got no idea why I wanted to be a teacher or even how I thought I'd be able to handle it since I have zero patience for stupidity and tend to resort to sarcasm when I'm frustrated, which I understand is not so good when you're teaching children.
True story: Subs get called to come into school at about 5:45am, which is not only insanely early, but also insanely early. One time they called me and said they needed me for a 4th grade class and I said, "They're almost 10 years old. They can handle it themselves," and I hung up.
Then, I graduated. And I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do. So I made a last minute call to the camp people, and oddly, they had an opening because one of the division heads had shredded his knee and needed surgery. They dropped me into his spot, and again oddly, it wound up being one of the best summers that I'd had there.
It is now ten years later. I've spent about 95% of that time in the same job that, as predicted, doesn't give me summers off. I've barely been back there since, but I do maintain a fantasy from time to time that has me quitting my job and spending one last summer up there, just for the hell of it. But that's unfeasible for some many reasons, not the least of which is that I'm married and about, well, 10-12 years older than all of the other counselors. I don't think it would be much fun to be the old person at camp that everyone loves during the day and then laughs at when they hit the bars at night.
It's not the youth that I'm looking to capture (or recapture), though it would be nice to be forty pounds lighter and ten years younger. It's more the feeling those years engendered. Let's not be mistaken: I love my life. It's turned out about as good as I could have ever hoped, considering that I didn't do anything that I thought I would. I have a beautiful wife who loves me (I think) and a dog sleeping in my lap as I type this. But man, didn't it feel incredible to be that young and that relaxed all the time? Sometime between age 17 (when I was diagnosed with severe stress-related acid reflux and the beginnings of an ulcer) and 22 (when I started working), it all just didn't matter. All I did was live.
There was one time that I remember when was an O.D. at camp, meaning that I had to stay on camp and make sure there were no issues with the campers while all the other counselors in my division went out on the "town."*
*I put town in quotations because I don't even think Milford qualifies as a town. It is literally a one stoplight town. It had a laundry, two pizza places, two bars, a Turkey Hill gas station, a liquor barn and about two or three restaurants. And that is it. The rest of it is wide open space. Oh, and a rock quarry.
I sat at the picnic table in the middle of the lawn in front of the bunks, and just stared at the sky. After about 20 minutes, one of the kids either woke up and said, "O.D.," and I went over to see what was wrong. The kid couldn't sleep, so I brought him out to the table with me for a bit, figuring it would get a little later, the kid would get tired and I'd bring him back to the bunk and put him down. We're sitting at the table, and I tell him to just look up at the sky like I am and not to talk too loud. After a few minutes, he says to me, "Is this all there is to do?" And it was true. That was all there was to do.
Suck on that, adulthood.
Incidentally (but not coincidentally), it's been ten years since I graduated college as well, which frankly is far more surreal than the camp thing. Camp never felt like one of those things that I'd do forever. I knew eventually that I'd have to get a real job that didn't give me summers off, and my time there would end.* But being in school seemed like something interminable. I remember driving out of the parking lot on the last day of high school and blasting Alice Cooper's "School's Out," but that fact is that it wasn't out forever. Not even close. At that time, I wanted to be an attorney (I know, I'm very creative with my "what I want to be when I grow up" choices), which meant that I would have potentially had seven more years ahead of me when I drove away from that horrible building with the pastel paneling out front.
*This is not entirely true. There was a long period of time that I thought I was going to be a school teacher. I even had a reasonably permanent substitute teaching gig during the first year that I was out of school. In hindsight, I've got no idea why I wanted to be a teacher or even how I thought I'd be able to handle it since I have zero patience for stupidity and tend to resort to sarcasm when I'm frustrated, which I understand is not so good when you're teaching children.
True story: Subs get called to come into school at about 5:45am, which is not only insanely early, but also insanely early. One time they called me and said they needed me for a 4th grade class and I said, "They're almost 10 years old. They can handle it themselves," and I hung up.
Then, I graduated. And I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do. So I made a last minute call to the camp people, and oddly, they had an opening because one of the division heads had shredded his knee and needed surgery. They dropped me into his spot, and again oddly, it wound up being one of the best summers that I'd had there.
It is now ten years later. I've spent about 95% of that time in the same job that, as predicted, doesn't give me summers off. I've barely been back there since, but I do maintain a fantasy from time to time that has me quitting my job and spending one last summer up there, just for the hell of it. But that's unfeasible for some many reasons, not the least of which is that I'm married and about, well, 10-12 years older than all of the other counselors. I don't think it would be much fun to be the old person at camp that everyone loves during the day and then laughs at when they hit the bars at night.
It's not the youth that I'm looking to capture (or recapture), though it would be nice to be forty pounds lighter and ten years younger. It's more the feeling those years engendered. Let's not be mistaken: I love my life. It's turned out about as good as I could have ever hoped, considering that I didn't do anything that I thought I would. I have a beautiful wife who loves me (I think) and a dog sleeping in my lap as I type this. But man, didn't it feel incredible to be that young and that relaxed all the time? Sometime between age 17 (when I was diagnosed with severe stress-related acid reflux and the beginnings of an ulcer) and 22 (when I started working), it all just didn't matter. All I did was live.
There was one time that I remember when was an O.D. at camp, meaning that I had to stay on camp and make sure there were no issues with the campers while all the other counselors in my division went out on the "town."*
*I put town in quotations because I don't even think Milford qualifies as a town. It is literally a one stoplight town. It had a laundry, two pizza places, two bars, a Turkey Hill gas station, a liquor barn and about two or three restaurants. And that is it. The rest of it is wide open space. Oh, and a rock quarry.
I sat at the picnic table in the middle of the lawn in front of the bunks, and just stared at the sky. After about 20 minutes, one of the kids either woke up and said, "O.D.," and I went over to see what was wrong. The kid couldn't sleep, so I brought him out to the table with me for a bit, figuring it would get a little later, the kid would get tired and I'd bring him back to the bunk and put him down. We're sitting at the table, and I tell him to just look up at the sky like I am and not to talk too loud. After a few minutes, he says to me, "Is this all there is to do?" And it was true. That was all there was to do.
Suck on that, adulthood.
posted by G.Wo @ 10:06 AM
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