For some, summer camp played out much like Allan Sherman's 1963 hit, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh." It was awful. With nearly 9 million kids set to take off for their own summer sleepaway camp, what do those who loathed every minute have to say??
This May 15, 2013 photo shows Lauren Russ in Chicago, posing with letters that she wrote home as a child from sleepaway camp begging her parents to come and get her. While many children enjoy attending overnight camp, Russ is one of a number of adults who look back on the experience with less-than-fond memories of feeling homesick and lonely.
(AP Photo/Michael S. Green)
EnlargeWhen the school year ends a few weeks from now, millions of kids will head off to sleepaway camp for a summer filled with color wars, kayaking and bunk life. Most will have a great time, some will make friends for life, and many will look back on the experience fondly.
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But amid these happy campers is another group of veterans who recall sleepaway camp quite differently. These were the kids who cried every day and sent letters home begging to be picked up. They were lonesome, miserable, bullied; hated the bugs, hated the pool. Many refused to ever go back, and decades later, they can recall their suffering in visceral detail ? from poison ivy to wretched food.
"Oh did I hate overnight camp," recalled Lauren Russ, 43, who lives in Chicago. "I cried every day and wrote two letters home a day asking my parents to come get me."
Russ' mom and dad saved those notes and even read some of them aloud at her wedding shower 10 years ago. "I got another letter from you," reads one of the heart-wrenching lines in Russ' schoolgirl's script. "Every time I get a letter I cry and become very homesick."
What was so bad about camp? Let Russ count the ways: "I'll never forget the first night I had to sleep in a tent. I hated the public showers, I hated sharing a room with several other girls, I hated the anxiety of packing and saying goodbye."
For Kelsey Tomascheski, 48, of Santa Clara, Calif., camp memories center on bad food. "I will admit that I was a picky eater, but the problem was more on quality," said Tomascheski. "I could only handle so many bland spaghetti feeds, too-salty chicken strips, and soggy fries. Usually halfway through the week I gave up and only ate PB&J at all three meals."
Some unhappy campers hated bunk life. "It was dirty," recalled Gerry Cotten, 25, a website developer in Toronto. "I was always into computers, and some sort of computer camp probably would have been fun, but sleeping in an ancient old wooden cabin, with disgusting washrooms a five-minute walk away, wasn't really appealing."
The great outdoors didn't hold much charm either: "Taking a dip in the lake each morning instead of having a shower wasn't really for me. They called it the Polar Dip."
According to the American Camp Association, nearly 9 million kids under the age of 18 attend one of the country's 7,000 overnight camps each summer, with stays ranging from a week to two months. Research on the association's website suggests that going to camp can build confidence, self-esteem, social skills, independence and a sense of adventure.
But for some campers, the experience was more like the funny 1963 hit song performed by Allan Sherman: "Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh, here I am at Camp Granada. Camp is very entertaining. And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining."
Kim Cooper, 46, hated the structured activities. "They said 'You need to go make lanyards now,'" she recalled. "Why do I need a lanyard?" She preferred "hiking solo in the woods looking for interesting wildlife." But other campers thought that was weird, and Cooper soon found herself "surrounded by a group of scary big kids who were shoving me around and calling me Moses" ? because of a stick she carried on her treks.
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