HOME / recycled: Previously published Slate articles made new.

You Are How You CampedWhat your enjoyment of sleep-away camp, or lack of same, says about your character.

By Timothy NoahPosted Monday, July 14, 2008, at 11:55 AM ET

It's the dog days of summer, and thousands of kids across the country are off at sleep-away camp. In 2006, Timothy Noah noticed that the degree to which you enjoy summer camp as a kid informs the personality you adopt as an adult. The article is reprinted below.

RSS

If there's a more reliable Rorschach than sleep-away camp, I'd like to see it. How you responded to being shipped off (often at an appallingly tender age) to a cluster of cedar cabins beside a mountain lake; to being taught Native American crafts, chants, and songs of dubious authenticity; and to being subjected to various painful hazing rituals—many of them involving underwear—reveals an awful lot about your fundamental character. If, as the Duke of Wellington claimed, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then the psychotherapy bills of our own great nation were run up on the tetherball courts of Camp Weecheewachee (or whatever the hell your summer camp was called).

Let's begin with the people who didn't like camp.

I was one such person. The first camp I got sent to was Camp Lenox, an establishment in the Berkshires that is still in business. During my summer there, in 1966, it was run by and for males who thrived on athletic competition. I did not. My older brother was an enthusiastic jock, and it was his love for the place that landed me there. I don't remember seeing much of him after we got off the bus—he was seven years my senior—but he'd occasionally appear in the distance, wearing the black beret that marked him as my enemy in Color War. I was assigned to the orange team; our symbol was a baton. To this day I shake my head in disbelief that a responsible camp director would set brother against brother in the name of competitive sport. Perhaps you find my thinking on this point a little rigid. Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not the sort of person who can alter his loyalties so easily, even within such a character-building realm. (I would have made a terrible Kennedy.)

Observing my perplexity with mild concern, my parents shipped me off to a different camp the following summer. This was Camp Arcady, in the Adirondacks. Now defunct, it was co-ed and less single-mindedly dedicated to sports than Camp Lenox had been. Arcady had other advantages over its predecessor, the most memorable being a waterfront counselor named Doreen who had once been a Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club. Visions of Doreen (who in the decade since her TV stardom had filled out quite satisfactorily) haunted my prepubescent dreams. Even now, in my mind's eye, I see Doreen emerging, like Botticelli's Venus, from a clamshell perched on the shores of Lake George, a whistle nestled chastely in her cleavage. It was probably because of Doreen that I learned to water-ski. Water-skiing is the only camp sport I remember enjoying. Otherwise, I was pretty miserable. For the evidence, click here (center row, fifth from the left).

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.

Some people hated camp so much that they made their parents bring them home. These people should not be confused with the outlaws described above. There is nothing outré about not being able to endure summer camp. The come-and-get-me set grow up to be neurotic and needy. These are people who can often be heard on C-SPAN's early-morning call-in program Washington Journal, filibustering from a time zone still blanketed in predawn darkness, until the host says, "Please state your question."

Page: 1 | 2 SINGLE PAGE

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

Illustrations by Nina Frenkel.

COMMENTS

Notes from the Fray Editor

Willerror and McQuacken thought summer camp was made up for the movies (it's a geographical thing), hemiram lived in fear of going to camp, and tuigirl started a rather ill-tempered discussion of national character. But that thread did raise the fascinating question of whether President Bush and the current candidates went to camp, and whether they liked it.

Comments from the Fray

If you'd had my homelife, you'd thank God for Camp Manitowish where people were nice, you could do all kinds of sailing and riding stuff, and the food was good and there was plenty of it. No screaming, no beatings.

--otter357

(To reply, click here)

There is one category of individuals left out of this great article: the campers who loved camp so much they modeled their adult lives on camp life. In my case, I moved to the woods and live, as I have often described it, "camped out." Of course, much of my philosophy--living lightly on the earth--has also informed my lifestyle, but I have, for years, credited my deep love of girl scout camp back in SE Iowa for my choice of location and style of living.

Camp Sacajawea, near Iowa City, was heaven as far as I'm concerned. I loved the horses and riding most of all. In fact, I can barely remember much of anything else -- oh, the scavenger hunts and finding the daddy long legs for them in the latrine and telling scary stories at night in our tent cabins. . . . O.K., I actually have lots of memories. But I found a letter I wrote to my parents back then which tells which horses are still at camp and names every one of them. I remember the rides through the glorious Iowa countryside -- pure enchantment. Bliss.

So now I live in a half-log cabin and my outhouse is as clean and neat as the latrines at camp. I live among the wildlife, mostly alone with nature and still enchanted by the experience. My neighbors are foxes, bears, wildcats, deer, mountain lions and . . . you get the picture.

Ah, camp! Along with Weekly Readers, going to the library, the county fair and swimming, one of the yummy joys of summer in small town Iowa and the perfect childhood.

--girlinworld

(To reply, click here)

(7/15)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES