Here’s an amusing take on summer camp from Slate.
Me? I have only one memory of summer camp, and, as you might expect, it is not a good one.
They called me The Suitcase Kid … because I brought a suitcase to camp. But didn’t lots of kids bring suitcases to camp, you ask; why stick me with the nickname? Not to *day* camp they didn’t.
Why the suitcase? Short answer: Mom. Longer answer: I was a sickly child (no surprise to anyone who knows the sickly grownup) with asthma being my primary malady. Mom, who would certainly have never considered *overnight* camp for any of her five children, nevertheless summoned the courage to allow us to be day trippers — provided, in my case, that I carried a suitcase (I’m talking honest-to-goodness SUITCASE here) full of emergency supplies, medicines and extra clothes of all stripes.
It was one of those old-fashioned red leather jobs that people like my grandparents brought from the old country. I lugged one to camp on a school bus filled with heartless tormenters … every … blessed … day. That’s my camp story. Signed, The Suitcase Kid.
