It’s summer camp time. When I was young, I LOVED going to summer camp. I went to church camp, scout camp, sports camp, day camp, night camp, family camp, Kum Ba Ya Camp, 1001 noises you can make with your body camp, and drop off your kids and speed away like Indy Driver Danica Patrick camp and that’s a short list.  As you may have already assessed, my parents loved for me to be at camp.I loved to go to camp and didn’t really need an excuse to go, if the summer experience had camp in its name, I was ALL over it.  One summer I even went to prison road cleanup camp - you know, orange uniformed chain gang kids on the highway picking up trash. Now that was a camp!

For many kids, camp is a rite of passage that includes a lot of firsts - first time away from mom and dad, first time eating delicious institutionalized food cooked to non-recognition, first case of posion ivy or oak in every  place on your body, first time really having to take orders from an older “sibling” like leader (usually with a name like Spike, Skippy, Wally, Scout, Summer, or Cookie). This highly trained camp counselor was someone who you looked up to like a super hero OR hated like Batman’s nemisis. For me, summer camp was the first (and thankfully only) time I ever had a swirly. If you don’t know what that is, don’t ask. Trust me, you are better off not knowing.  Even getting a swirly didn’t detour me from working with young people and at camps as a young adult. I taught water skiing at a camp in Winter Haven, Florida, after my freshman year at Florida Southern College. Later, I worked at Camp Rockmont in Black Mountain, NC, where I worked running the ski program with an 18-year-old surfer boy from Florida named Biff. It will always be a special place for me as it is at that place I fell in love with my wife (who worked at Camp Merimac across town teaching sychronized swimming). It’s also the place several years later where I, on bended knee, proposed to her on the camp ski boat with James Taylor playing on the boat stereo 8-track on a crisp October day, back-dropped by the autumn colors of fall. Yes, I had BIG hair then and was likely wearing short Quick Silver ski trunks that geeks cool skiers of the day wore. (I ONLY mention all this because TODAY is our wedding anniversary).

Summer camp is the ultimate summer job for the adventurer and the worst punishment for a spoiled rich kid. Most camp counselors are paid like they were making Nikes in Southeast Asia (which looks like a fortune to a CIT who pays to come to camp and cleans latrines all summer - think Meatballs, the movie). I wasn’t there for money, no, camp was much more RICH than that. It was about making memories for young boys and helping teens develop character taught throught analogy of skiing (that’s why I told my parents I was going anyway). Actually, it was all about being out on a beautiful lake all summer, skiing when the kids got tired, and grilling steaks on an open fire as the sun set. Really. Oh yeah, and courting my wife.

Well the camp thing has come full circle. My son is at Camp Buck Toms Boy Scout camp and we just received a letter from him today (the day I am going to pick him up). His letter was sweet and filled with descriptions of the fun things he was doing, how much me missed his little sisters and how he couldn’t wait to get home to mow the yard and wash and wax the car.  What he failed to mention in his letter is that he threw up while at camp. So being the rational parents we are, we immediately assume he either caught some summer camp disease rapidly killing off tweenagers and teens OR he ate entirely too much ”Splendid Table” cuisine at the camp-a-teria (the throw up story was of course reported by a mole in camp in a letter written to his mother and yesterday revealed to me). I now know what my parents meant when they said, “Wherever you go, we’ll be there, always watching.”  While my son omitted the “throw up” story in his letter, my friend Laurie emailed me yesterday and said she had received a letter from her son who reported that my son had thrown up.  So I emailed my friend Laurie back in fun “guessing” what her son had written. This is what I sent her:

Laurie, I can just picture Junior’s letter to you:

Dear Mom:

I am having fun at camp. I have gone swiming everyday. I am working on my three scout badges. Camp is swell. Russell threw up today.

Love,

Junior

Below is the email response from my friend Laurie:

Yes, camp is good for kids. I’m headed there for an overnight and to drive him home. I have been itching to go back all week now. It’s been awhile since I have had poison ivy. Perhaps at the campfire tonight we’ll be entertained by an arm pit orchestra who will play until someone er…throws up.

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund and co-founder of the Jeffrey Roth Cycling Foundation. Click here for more information on professional speaker Tim Richardson.