Summertime
NPR recently had a wonderful episode of This American Life today called "Notes on Camp." The stories were outstanding (as they always are on this show), and you can hear the entire episode here.One of the things that really struck me was when they said that the world was divided into two kinds of people: camp people and non-camp people.
It struck me because, for one summer, I was both.
As a kid, I never went to a camp. I may have had a chance at one point and turned it down--I don't remember. But after my freshman year in college, when I was trying to find a way to avoid being home for the summer, I saw a flyer on our campus bulletin board for a camp counselor position at a summer camp in Massachusetts, in the Berskshire Mountains.
Camp Greylock.
The flyer made it sound like fun. I'd never been in the mountains before. I'd never been to Massachusetts before. Plus, I played tennis more than well enough to be an instructor.
Of course, I wound up teaching baseball instead (for which I was totally unqualified), but that's a different story.
How I got accepted, I'll never know. But I did, so I packed up my stuff, flew to New York City (and saw the Marine Air Terminal, which was absolutely remarkable), and flew a parakeet into Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Let me insert at this point that I was absolutely the dictionary definition of a rube. And for a visual point of reference, I was 6' 1" and weighed 140 pounds. With a full beard. I was the pretzel stick version of Grizzly Adams.
The fellow who picked me up at the airport stopped at Friendly's on the way to the camp. That was my first experience with a Fribble, which (back then) was a giant milkshake. He told me that I'd barely be able to finish it (he was right), but by the end of the summer, I'd be knocking them back with no problem (he was right).
There were dozens of stories from that summer, but I want to tell you about three of them today.
The first story was that Tim Taylor's mother was totally hot. He was the softest, whiniest kid in our bunk, but on parent visitation day his mother came (by herself, and no wedding ring) and she was just hot beyond words. I was desperately hoping for a moment straight out of The Graduate (actually, I was hoping for more of a Summer of '42 moment, but without the dead husband), and I knew that mathematically there was at least a one in a million chance that it would happen.
The long odds, not surprisingly, did not come through. Somehow, though, it makes me feel better today to know that the odds of Tim Taylor's mother seducing me weren't one in a million. It was probably one in a thousand, which means my chances were a thousand times better than I thought.
Second story. I came from the Jethro Tull/Yes/ELP school of music. When I got to camp, though, which was dominated by counselors from New Jersey and New York, they were all listening to the same thing: Billy Joel.
That's right. The Stranger was on every car stereo, in every boombox, on every radio station. It was super-saturated on every single speaker in the camp. I think that was one of the first moments when I understood just how different it was to be from New Jersey than it was to be from Texas.
I'm not sure it's really that different now. But it was back then.
Third story. Every camp has a superstar, and our superstar was Eric Grand. He was ten years old, and he was a Beatle--he even had Paul McCartney's haircut.
Everyone loved Eric Grand--campers, counselors, nurses, the camp director. He was a perfect kid--intelligent, polite, and funny. He was also a phenomenal athlete, by far the best athlete in the camp in his age group.
In a digital world, Eric Grand was a one.
Zero was in my bunk, and his name was Eugene Goldberg. He had big eyes and big ears. He said "f---" when he got mad, which was all the time. He wasn't very smart, which wasn't his fault. He didn't have any friends, and I'm not sure he cared.
Gene (his nickname) was famous, actually. He'd been sent home from camp the summer before, an unprecedented penalty, for saying "f--- you" to a counselor. He was unanimously regarded as the worst kid, by far, in the 9-10 age group. He was, in short, the worst kid in the entire camp.
He bunked right next to me all summer long.
It's hard when you're nineteen and you're responsible for a kid like Gene Goldberg. He's not fun. He doesn't improve. He doesn't seem to care. He had no clue about appropriate behavior. Most of the time, he was totally sullen and defiant. Sometimes he was just a little ball of hate.
One of the things I did that summer was start a little running club. I don't think I had a very good attitude that summer--I felt uncomfortable and anxious too often--but I would run at 7 a.m., before breakfast, and fifty kids or so would run with me. I'm not sure how long it lasted--I think I stopped doing it after a few weeks (bad attitude), but I remember that Gene Goldberg was one of the kids who always ran.
I noticed because Gene really didn't want to do anything, usually. He wasn't fast, but he showed up, and that was something.
After four weeks of camp, there was a Parent's Visitation Day. Some kids had cried for the first week of camp because they were homesick, so it was a big deal for them to see Mom and Dad.
This was when I discovered that Tim Taylor's mom was hot.
More importantly, this was also when I saw Gene Goldberg's parents yell at him. None of the hundreds of parents at camp that day yelled at their kid, but they did.
When I saw him, just a little kid, kind of twisting around in place as they berated him, I realized why Gene Goldberg was so damn angry.
I treated him better after that day. I'm not sure he even noticed, but I saw him differently. I tried to talk to him more. I realized that what he did, in many ways, really wasn't his fault.
At the end of camp, we had Field Day (or something--I forget what it was called, exactly). Field Day was like a camp Olympics, and there were competitions in almost everything.
After a long day, the very last event was a "long distance" run. It was three laps around a clearing, and the entire race was about six hundred yards long.
There were at least thirty kids in this race, but the counselors were joking that there was no reason to even run this race, because Eric Grand was standing near the front, and in addition to being the nicest, best-looking, most popular, most athletic kid, he was also the fastest. By far. He'd already won four events earlier in the day.
Obviously, with Eric in the race, it was going to be a rout.
The starter blew the whistle, and off they went. Eric Grand took off with his beautiful, gloriously perfect stride, on his way to glory.
Except that he was behind Gene Goldberg.
Gene had sprinted like mad from the moment the whistle blew, and even though he ran like he was carrying a large boat anchor, his top sprinting speed managed to get him just in front of Eric's easy stride.
This was going to last for about ten seconds, obviously.
At the end of the first lap, though, Gene was still in front, with Eric right on his shoulder. The other kids had already started to drift back. It was comical to see how much more effort Gene had to expend to stay two feet ahead of Eric, but he did.
Eric still looked like he was coasting, ready to turn on the gas at any moment.
At the end of the second lap, Gene Goldbert was still in front, hanging on like a scarecrow in a hurricane. His eyes were as big as cantaloupes. He looked like a cartoon character whose body was about to explode.
He looked at me as he went past. He didn't look at someone near me. He looked at me.
As they they ran down the backstretch of the course that, for the first time in his life, everyone was cheering for Gene Goldberg. We were shouting ourselves hoarse, screaming, imploring him to hang on.
Eric was still right on Gene's shoulder as they turned the last corner, but he didn't make a move. He didn't know how to come from behind, how to dig deep. Gene Goldberg was willing to suffer, to hurt, to win.
And then Gene Goldberg started to pull away. His lead went from one yard to five yards, to ten.
Gene broke the tape and was mobbed by everyone, including me. I know it's hard to think of a nine-year-old as being a hero, but it was a heroic effort. It was mythic. Twenty-five years later, it remains as one of the most electrifying moments in my life.
When Gene saw me, he just yelled "I WON! I WON!" I don't think I've ever been prouder of somone.
What I remember from that night is that Gene Goldberg was laughing. He was happy. For the first time that summer, and maybe for one of the first times in his life, he was just a happy, goofy kid. He was still talking about the race when it was time for lights out in our bunk, and for once, we just let him talk.
It sounded good.
I don't know how Gene's life turned out. I hope that race was a defining moment for him, a moment that he used as a foundation to be happy and at peace. A simplistic notion, to be sure, but one that is still deeply felt.
There are times when life, even for a boy, is all about earning something that can't be taken away.
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