My Summer with Dr. Ruth

This past weekend, I took my daughter to sleep away camp orientation at Camp Arrowhead in Lewes, DE.  She and a friend will spend five nights there this summer and she can’t wait to go.

Exploring the campgrounds made my own camp memories from the ‘80s come rushing back. From the watered down taste of bug juice - sometimes fortified with actual bugs - to the 40+ lanyard (gimp) key chains I made every summer even though I did not have any keys, my childhood camp memories were mostly good ones.  

Until I was twelve I went to two different day camps. First, I attended a camp in my hometown of Greenwich, CT’s Tod’s Point Beach as a younger camper and then Long Ridge Day Camp in neighboring Stamford in my tween years. I recall spending hours at Greenwich's Camp Carefree  exploring our town’s rocky beach set alongside the Long Island Sound. I remember bursting seaweed bubbles, getting stuck in a canoe in an inlet, and making slightly lopsided Popsicle stick picture frames which my mom promptly threw away.

Later at Long Ridge, I learned archery, played a mean game of tether ball, and made up a rockin’ dance routine to the song Let’s Hear it for the Boy from the Footloose soundtrack. I told you it was the eighties. One year my group’s name was The Uptown Girls and the next year, The Material Girls. I think you get the polaroid picture.

I enjoyed day camp. I was athletic and being good at sports and funny made you “cool” so I was in my element.

The summer after sixth grade, my parents decided to send me for eight weeks to Camp Emerson sleep away camp in Massachusetts. I was a pretty independent kid and I was initially excited to spread my brand of cool to another state.

My excitement faded when I realized that most of the kids there had been going to sleep away camp together since they were 8-years-old. I was a 12-year-old newbie and an innocent one at that. A number of the girls already had "boyfriends" who lived on  the other side of the camp past the tennis courts. I was just starting to like boys but had no idea how to express that interest and felt very uncomfortable in my own skin and pre-teen body.  My athleticism and humor which had helped me fit in at day camp previously, weren't enough in this strange new world where long hair, camp experience and knowledge of non-childish things ruled. 

At night the girls in my bunk liked to listen to Dr. Ruth’s Sexually Speaking radio show. Our two 18-year old counselors who were from Australia and England respectively, supported this activity not knowing that some of us (read: me) knew very little about sex. My parents had given me the cartoon book Where Did I Come From? a few years prior so I knew what IT was, but I found myself both repulsed and confused by the naked cartoon drawings and the thought that at one point my parents had done (and maybe even were still doing - ewww! ) the activities that those cartoons participated in throughout the book. Not having older siblings or wanting to talk to my parents about the subject left me pretty much in the dark about sex.

Gimp wasn't all I learned about at camp.....

So there we were, several nights a week listening as Dr. Ruth gave sage advice to her callers who asked very personal and detailed adult questions. The other girls would giggle and scream at some of the callers so to fit in, I joined them. One night, I had absolutely no idea what Dr. Ruth was taking about (a common occurrence) and I giggled at apparently the wrong time. It became evident to the other girls that I might not exactly understand what was being discussed. A girl named Abby who was from Boston and had an older brother and sister said “Laura, you DO know what an orgasm is, don’t you?” I panicked internally and then said casually, “Sure. It’s a living thing.” The rest of the girls burst out laughing. Abby said “No, Laura, that’s an ORGANISM. An orgasm is when a woman gets excited – down there.” I was mortified. Mortified and confused. I thought to myself, “Your private parts can get excited?” I totally didn’t understand the mechanics behind this and I recall briefly considering that maybe vaginas had feelings. Needless to say, that summer was VERY educational.

As I am on the precipice of sending my 8-year-old off to sleep away camp for the first time in a couple of months, I hope that she has a great time learning how to play tether ball, performing a dance routine, and making beautiful gimp key chains that I promise not to throw out.

And I hope that her camp education involves only living organisms and that excited body parts remain a mystery for a few more years.