As a kid I always wanted to go to summer camp. At the end of the school year I would watch as a few of my friends went off to some generic sounding camp in “the mountains” and anxiously await for their letters to arrive. They told tales of camp fires, cabin drama and kissing boys…or wanting to kiss boys as the case may be. Alas, I never got to go to sleep away camp.

However, I did get to attend a few days of an all-girl girl scout day camp. I could describe that experience in three words…it was AWFUL! I hated every single second of it. They made us sweep out dirty, spider filled latrines in the middle of the woods and swim in the murkiest lake I have ever seen in my life. Have you ever tried to get an 8 year old girl to sweep out a dirty latrine? Don’t! They won’t like it and they may even cry. It was complete misery and I kept thinking the whole time how much better a real camp would be than this watered down girl scout version. As I never got to compare the two, I guess I will never know if I would have loved sleep away camp.

I was reminded this morning of my girl scout camp woes because of an article in Slate magazine: You are how you camped. Here is an excerpt from the article; it made me chuckle because I am a freelance writer - one of the jobs the journalist claims is expected of an ‘I don’t like camp’ person:
 

“People (like myself) who didn’t enjoy camp tend to have a problem engaging in organized activities of all kinds. Later in life we often become  criminals or sociopaths. The more respectable among us often become journalists. If we’re extremely bright or creative (or aspire to be),  we may become writers or scholars or artists.  The common thread is an outsider mentality.  A self-flattering analysis, I know, but such is my privilege as author of this article.”

For those of you who went to camp, what kind of camper were you?

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