Now and then, I’ll dream about a bucolic paradise. A dewy morning where sunlight speckles tree-lined meadows and a silver lake where the opportunity for unlimited outdoor activities lay in wait.
But I’m not envisioning some idyllic upstate getaway. My subconscious visit to this woodland nirvana is punctuated by gnawing homesickness, mean-girl taunts and tyrannical softball games. Considering I’m a married, 46-year-old woman with an elementary-school-age daughter, it’s a super weird dream.
You know how some people have recurring nightmares about being naked in public or taking a test they didn’t study for? Well, my recurring nightmare is that I’ve been sent back to my former Jewish summer camp in New York’s Catskill Mountains against my will.
Here’s what’s so odd about these nightmares: I didn’t feel this way about camp as an adolescent; if I did, I wouldn’t have voluntarily returned for five summers straight.
Now, I’m not a mental health professional, but I’ve had a lot of therapy over the years. So, I wonder if my nightmares are the result of my subconscious recognizing how traumatizing those summers actually were.
I first showed up at camp in 1988 as a fully-fledged “Dirty Dancing” obsessive, oblivious to the fact that, despite the Catskillian setting, my fellow campers didn’t share in my enthusiasm to be the next Frances “Baby” Houseman. I was left to practice the merengue and cha-cha on my own while my “friends” were off playing jacks and kickball.
Another incident seared into my memory that summer was how the camp staff thought it was OK to break out Color War by hiring a male stripper to gyrate in front of a dining hall full of underage girls. Sure, I gleefully screamed along with everyone else, but somewhere in the back of my sexually innocent, 11-year-old mind, I knew this was messed up.
I would then spend the next four summers desperately trying to fit in with the other campers. So much so that I didn’t use any of that energy to establish (and embrace!) my own personality.
To be fair, I get that the “trauma” I’m describing is with a lowercase “t.” As an affluent Jewish adolescent growing up in the New York City suburbs, I benefited from immense privilege by attending an expensive camp for five summers. But decades of life experience have since put this period in perspective: My equally affluent peers probably bullied me out of sheer boredom. Seriously, what did we have to worry about? We didn’t live in fear of war or the crumbling of democracy. Our biggest problem was whether we wore the “right” Umbro shorts or if someone from the boys’ camp thought we were cute.
I’ve been experiencing these nightmares since adulthood, which is around the time I began therapy, so the delayed Jewish summer camp trauma tracks. About 15 years ago, I even tried channeling these newfound observations into a novella. A mercifully unpublished novella, I should say, as it epitomizes what Anne Lamott would call a “shitty first draft.”
As a professional writer, this reimagination of my final summer at Jewish summer camp in 1992 is not my finest literary moment. But I admire myself for at least trying to reinvent the 15-year-old version of me into an assertive, Pearl Jam-infatuated feminist who was so over the mean girls that populated my summer camp.
I wouldn’t develop this level of self-awareness for another 20 years or so in real life.
Once I did (thanks, therapy!), I concluded that no one is to blame for my tarnished memories of Jewish summer camp. Our parents did the best they could with the resources they had, while my fellow campers and I were little more than clueless adolescents.
I sure didn’t know there were camps specializing in theater and creative arts. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have spent years criticizing my parents for not recognizing that their athletically inept daughter didn’t belong at a sports-oriented camp. (I’m still “afraid of the ball,” but “Master of the House” from “Les Misérables” will always be a banger.)
Even though I believe every life mistake is a life lesson, I do have two regrets about my Jewish summer camp years.
The first regret is my debilitating low self-esteem. I allowed the camp mean girls to hurt me with their nasty comments about my hair, non-designer clothing and interest in musical theater. I spent years forcing myself into cringe-worthy getups like Z. Cavaricci parachute pants and Hot Dogger tracksuits and pretending to enjoy mandatory camp-fun activities like Color War so I could feel accepted.
I definitely could’ve used some Taylor Swift songs to lift me up back then. Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” didn’t quite cut it in 1989 (love you, Paula!).
My second regret is attending the same camp as my popular, athletic cousin because I was too scared to go alone. While my cousin was indifferent to my presence, her best friend epitomized the Jewish Summer Camp Mean Girl. Armed with a bully’s arsenal of oversized entitlement and even bigger hair, this New Jersey preteen soon turned me into her (verbal) punching bag. Her insults are laughable now, though chastising me for crying on my birthday because it fell during Color War was just plain cruel, even by mean-girl standards.
Instead of forging my individuality during these five summers, I wasted my time angry and hurt that my Queen Bee cousin wasn’t my automatic BFF. I wanted her to be my entrée into the cool kids’ world, the ones who would introduce me to pink poofy bat mitzvah dresses and teach me how to make memory candles – or maybe how not to wince at a pop-up softball. But she didn’t deserve the social demands I foisted upon her because I was too chickenshit to carve out my own experiences. What I couldn’t see as a naive preteen was that even though we were family, we had nothing in common. She was quiet, reserved and liked to play tennis. I was loud and dramatic, and I liked re-enacting Baby and Johnny’s climactic “Dirty Dancing” mambo.
Would I have made a badass Color War leader like she did? Probably not. Though I’ll always be steamed she was cast as Lola in a camp production of “Damn Yankees” over me. Girl was no Gwen Verdon (then again, neither was I).
For those of us who felt like a “loser” during our Jewish summer camp years, here’s what I’ve learned after so many years of reflection: We weren’t losers. Now that many of us are parents to Jewish summer camp-bound kids, I’m so grateful we have a greater awareness of bullying than our parents did 30 years ago, as well as a multitude of prevention resources available.
The best thing we can do to heal from those painful experiences is to encourage our kids’ individuality and interests. If they’re not into sports, that’s OK! The number of camps specializing in STEM, arts and theater has grown exponentially since 1992. There are tons of different ways for kids to thrive over the summer, whether they’re embracing their love of science, painting or dance.
Thirty years ago, conformity was the norm at my Jewish summer camp. So I tamed my frizzy hair into submission with Aussie Sprunch Spray and slipped on a Champion sweatshirt and a pair of boy boxer shorts. I didn’t know it then, but I was Baby Houseman. Not the confident Baby sexy dancing on the Kellerman’s bridge. I was the sullen Baby, relegated to a corner at the end-of-summer show.
My advice to anyone sending their kids Jewish summer camp now?
I think Johnny Castle said it best:
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
