My oldest kid hasn’t gone to sleepaway camp yet for various reasons, and I have implored my wife to send her for at least one summer because (A) I want these kids out of the house, and (B) as one of my friends said about his kid at camp, “I know they’ll come back a different person than when they left.” Summer camp is an indelible experience for so many kids because it represents the first time they’re really, truly out on their own. Then again, I’m not sure why we did anything. I’m not quite sure why we ran from, you know, a phone call. And whenever a real person answered the phone, we would scream I’M A MOTHERFUCKER WITH A BUFFALO BUTT, hang up the phone, and then run away. So, at night, we snuck down to the phone and started dialing random 1-800 numbers, hoping to either get a live operator or a live girl at the other end of the line. I don’t remember playing any soccer whatsoever at that camp, but I very much DO remember the camp was at a boarding school, and that we got to stay in the dorms all week, and that the dorm had a pay phone that was the only phone in the whole joint. My most vivid memories of summer camp all feature me being a teenage shithead.
