Tag: camp

ramblings

Summer Camp: 2006 Edition

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This past weekend I headed up to the Berkshires in the lovely state of Connecticut (highest per capita income in the Union baby!) to see what it was like to go to camp as an adult. My wife and I, along with another couple that we are really good friends with, grabbed a 4 bed cabin and the biggest take away is that going to camp as an adult leaves you sore as all bloody hell but smiling none the less.
Over 2 days, I enjoyed:

  • getting stuck on the side of an Upstate NY road for 2.5 hrs when the bus to camp broke down
  • almost getting an open container ticket by the NYS Highway Patrol who came to see why a big bus was in a no-standing zone and found about 50 people drinking heavily (there was a huge supermarket right where we were stuck thankfully)
  • seeing lots of stars (the night kind)
  • okay-to-bad food with plenty of bug juice
  • rock climbing
  • hiking and rock scrambling
  • archery
  • lake swimming (technically a pond according to Google Maps)
  • very loud people from Staten Island
  • softball along with a keg
  • drunken Uno
  • not writing any letters home
  • riding a mechanical bull
  • mountain biking
  • more swimming
  • an all-out dodgeball war where I happened to win one match by nailing a dead ringer for Jean Gerrard (character in Talladega Nights) in the leg right as he was going to peg me
  • winning the Bonnie and Clyde award for best married couple at the awards lunch (okay, there weren’t that many married people there but still…).
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Now, just about two days later, my body keeps getting more and more sore. It hurts to walk, hurts to bend and I love it! I’m inspired to take up climbing again too, and since there is a sweet vert wall in NYC in the UWS called the Atrium and because my sis goes to New Paltz, which is smack dab in the heart of great climbing country, I am really psyched! Overall, the weekend was a bit dorky and a bit cheesy but a ton of fun and I would do it again, as long as I brought a posse back with me the next time. I mean, where else but camp are you going to jam all of those activities above into 2 days!
ramblings

Summer Camp II

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On Saturday night, I attended the second Camp Lohikan NYC reunion and experienced for the first time what many other bloggers have experienced: someone came up to me and said, “I loved your post! I found your blog by doing a google search and absolutely loved it!” In this case, it was an entry I wrote last October about camp. Not only did Karen love it, but she sent it to tons of people that I knew from those days who also loved it. It was very interesting to say hello to people and to have them immediately say, “I loved what you wrote!” Not that I minded…

In the spirit of giving the people what they want, my resolution now is to post more entries about camp and my memories from those halcyon days. Not all be mushy like my first and only camp post. In fact, most won’t be. But, before I move to far along in life and before I forget even more of what I used to know, I’m going to get some of this stuff down. Stephanie has said in the past to post more memoir-style entries, to write more “I remember…” exercises and then post them and I think that camp is the perfect source of material.

So, my first memory is about Canteen, the Rec Hall and the video game Galaxian. When I was in the inter division, we had Cantenn after dinner. Canteen was a time when, with all the other campers in our division, we got to go buy candy ($1 a day stipend was provided before you had to pay out of pocket) and play video games in a room that was in the back of the multi-purpose Rec Hall. There were about 20 stand up coin-op video games in that room, some more popular than others. The popular ones always had a line and I hated lines. Canteen lasted for only a finite period of time and I didn’t want to waste that time by just standing around. So, for some reason, probably because no one was playing it because it was so damn old, I started to play Galaxian, a Space Invaders sort of game put out by Midway in 1979.

This game became MY game, mostly because no one else ever played it. It got to be a joke – “Where is Jeff? He’s at Galaxian, duh!” I played it the entire Canteen period most days during my time at Lohikan, year after year. When I became a senior, Canteen switched from after dinner to after evening activity and when a lot of people were off hooking up at the riflery range or down by Arts and Farts, I was alone in the Canteen with Galaxian.

Over time, I got really good and could go many, many levels without ever losing a ship. Others who would see me playing were in awe — I was that good. It was a zen thing, because I knew the exact patterns for the first couple of boards, it was in essence meditation after a long day. I knew exactly where to be, when to fire, how to bob and weave my way through the missiles that were fired against me and I almost never faltered. If I died on one of the early boards, I just tanked the game and started over. I became one with the machine, and it seemed that my hands reacted faster than my mind could even process the info that was being presented to me. 17 missiles would be coming at me and somehow I would be able to juke them all. It became MY thing – this game was MINE. I would stretch my 3 lives out over 20 – 30 minutes. If I got on the game, basically you were just left waiting. With so many other little things out of my control, whether or not I was popular, whether or not a certain girl liked me, etc this game was one of the few little things in camp I could control and I just didn’t control it, I dominated it.

I think it occured during my last summer but eventually the game wasn’t just mine anymore. An Australian counselor with a pony tail named John (I think he taught music, I seem to remember him travelling about with a guitar) started playing this game as well. It was frustrating to show up and find someone playing – for three years this game usually was empty or if someone was playing, they would die rather fast and I would soon be on it for the remainder of Canteen. He was a different story though for he knew what he was doing. I remember one epic night when we played a 2 player game where we each rung up around 30K – 50K points. We actually attracted a crowd around us because we both were so damn good and this game was such an odd one to feature two video game gunslingers in battle against each other. He would play for 10 minutes, then I would play for 10 minutes, back and forth, past the time when Canteen should have ended. I’m not sure what happened. I like to think that neither of us were defeated, instead we just ran out of time to continue our battle.
Years later, I not only remember the game but the battle and all the other nights that I spent playing it. I remember that when I occasionally found myself in a relationship, I still managed to find time to play it at least once a night. It was my ritual and it needed to be done. I now have Galaxian for the Atari 2600 – yes, I have a working Atari 2600 – but its not the same because you can fire too many missiles. One of the features that I liked about the older stand up coin-op version was that if you fired a missile, it either needed to hit an alien ship or it needed to leave the screen before you could fire another one. The Atari 2600 version allows you to fire missiles at will which means you need a lot less skill to excel at it. I’ve been looking on eBay for a real stand up coin-op version of Galaxian and have seen ones for around $500 – $1000. Once I get a place that is big enough for it, I’m going to thrown down and purchase it. Then it will always be Canteen time in my home. I can’t wait.

ramblings

Summer Camp

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I just saw a face on Friendster that I haven’t seen in decades. I know her first name is Audrey because Friendster told me her first name is Audrey but I don’t know her last name. Her profile doesn’t list it and I cannot for the life of me remember what it is or was (maybe she’s married now). I think it’s one syllable. In fact, I wouldn’t have remembered her first name either if it wasn’t provided to me, which is sad because a long time ago she was a very important friend of mine. I remember she said one of the nicest things to me at one of my worst pre-teen and/or teenage moments, period. I had just asked someone out, that person said no and I was crushed, very unhappy and extremely angry. Right outside the back door of the canteen in Camp Lohikan’s rec hall, as it was slightly drizzling she said, while wearing a grey hooded zippered sweatshirt,

“One day, you are going to make a great husband.” It sounds like such a simple statement but to a deeply depressed 14 year old, it was incredibly profound and it made all the difference in the world. Obviously it had an impact on me because, all these years later, I still vividly remember it. When others rejected me later on in life I would go back to her words to brush off the hurt – this is true, not some concocted memory. Look at me about 13 years later – I have made someone a great husband. And I have a great wife too. Interesting how some things work out like that.

Man, not knowing her last name is really going to bug me. I had a big crush on her for a while too. I remember the first time I saw her I wanted, needed, to know her name. So, one day when I was waling down the big hill to the lake and she was in front of me, when she dropped her activity card, I picked it up to learn who she was and what bunk she was in. I thought that was a pretty sly move. Maybe that is why I remember that moment. I was 12 at the time.

At camp, we were very good friends. In fact, she was one of my best and truest female friends summer after summer. My crush on her was always there though, sometimes subtle and deep in the background, sometimes more pronounced though I don’t think she ever knew until I told her. I finally got up the nerve to ask her out once during the 4 summers we spent together. I thought I remembered exactly the “when” and “where” but the when is now fuzzy to me, because I thought it was during my last summer there, right before I left to go on a 3 day, 2 night hiking excursion through the Catskill Mountains. That can’t be right though because I was dating someone at the time (who I promptly broke up with when I returned from that trip – another story in itself). So, it must have been earlier in the summer, probably when I was striking out left and right with women. Regardless of when it was I remember where it was: by the pool, on the hill, close to the road. I said that if I didn’t ask her, I would always regret it and that I had to know how she felt about me. Her answer should be obvious – she said no in case it wasn’t to you. What the hell was her name?!

Memories to me are funny little things. They are mental snapshots of events that like regular photos fade over time. Different details fade faster than others though. I remember so many faces; I can immediately pull up some many images in my mind when thinking about camp but the names almost all escape me.

Here are some names that I don’t want to forget: Dave Lampert, David Lyon, Scott Gausling (who turned me onto both rock and rap), Doug Jenson (and his afternoon tea service), Ian Brassett (who turned me into a Man U supporter because he supported Arsenal and I wanted to annoy him), Marc Blum (who still has a pair of fatigues that I want back, though I saw him in a mosh pit in 1995 where he told me “they are now shorts!”), Michael Endes, Jeff Beitler, Todd and Adam Shapiro, Dave Sereata (sic), Greg Lyons, Richard Johnson (his dad was supposedly Dennis Johnson of the Celtics, not sure if that is true), Melanie Talesnick, Lindsey Melnick, Holly Something (Orians! – added 5/9/06), VJ Fallabella, Evan Ruane, JB Something, Rob Melnick (who, rumor had it, played with GI Joes naked on his bed), Tiny Something (his name wasn’t even Tiny, that was his nickname because he was so huge).

Man oh man, I can’t remember anyone’s name. The names above represent maybe 5% of the people I knew. I even went to the camp website just now – I have gotten that nostalgic. I even posted something on the camp message board. I may have to go to the Poconos this weekend now.
When I remember more names, I’ll add them as comments.

OR I’ll just add them to the post! The second I left work I remembered Audrey’s last name – Kessler! It just popped into my head as I headed east along 41st St towards the subway. In fact, I remembered that Audrey isn’t even the girl I was thinking of – Audrey is the girl I was thinking of’s younger sister who also attended Camp Lohikan! So, if you reread this post, please substitute Eden for Audrey. I mean, how can you forget a name like Eden? Well, I did, at least for a little bit. This investigation explains Audrey’s age being 23 (her sister Eden, my friend, is 26 and only one year younger) and why she looks like the girl I was thinking of but sort of not really. I am no longer annoyed. Happy Friday.

’06 UPDATE: I met both of them at a camp reunion in the summer of ’05. I joked about this post and found out that they hadn’t read it (though many others had – see my Summer Camp II post). I got to share the story above with them and it really made them smile. Then, afterwards Eden emailed me to say that she had read the post and that it really, really made her smile. What a great full circle moment. Ka is truly a wheel.