Summer Camp
The Source
One of my favorite teachers, Charles Frank at Illinois College, said, “When you stop learning you won’t die, but you’d might as well.” Charlie was cool. I’ve just come off my first summer camp of the season. 80 or so little dynamos of energy and mischief descended upon our campground last Friday for the first in a series of performing arts camps, and although I’ve been in education for forty years, I keep forgetting that I still have much to learn. The kids covered the explosive spectrum from 5th to 8th grade, an age which leaves even many child psychologists bewildered. (And curiously, the age which causes most fathers to abandon their children.) While I left my courageous crew of high school and college age counselors to do the actual herding, teaching and feeding, I took it upon myself to conduct a scientific study of the behavior of adolescents when released from school and turned loose in a semi-wilderness setting. I think there may be a doctoral thesis somewhere in this. My findings: ---Despite everything you read about the current youthful generation being completely tied to their cell phones, this is not true. Their mothers, however, may need therapy without electronic contact for two whole days. ---Wieners are Godly. Hire all the gourmet cooks and do all the culinary planning you want, just slap a hotdog down in front of little Willy and you become his new kitchen hero. ---The average adolescent cannot and should not be required to carry a salad, a plate of spaghetti, and orange Kool-Aid across tiled floor unless you’re about to teach a lesson about the felling of the Walls of Jericho. Side note: a cereal bowl full of Trix and milk are excellent object lessons for The Great Flood. ---And in deference to dear Art Linkletter who died just recently, kids do eat the darnedest things. Most love salad if you conceal it under a volcano of Ranch dressing, they prefer garlic bread to plain, and an astounding number will choose a banana over a homemade cookie. What’s this world coming to? ---You don’t use phrases like, “Okay, you can take a shower if you like.” Instead, the “Hey Bubba! Strip and dip . . . now!” will do more to promote the fragrance of God at the evening campfire. ---A fifth grader has little interest in the wonder of grace, the peace of Christ, or the joy of heaven, but he is terribly concerned about where he’ll be sitting when he gets there. And what they’ll have to eat. “Does God do the cooking or does he have help?” ---The average lifespan of a ping-pong ball at summer camp us just under 27 seconds. ---Homesickness is more contagious than swine flu, and a phone call to the Center for Disease Prevention and Control in Atlanta does no good at all. The trick: isolate the first case immediately and you’ve got it made. “Where did your friend Suzie go? Oh, she’s working on a very, very special project!” ---Subset to the above finding: the two things that kids associate most closely with home are food and bed. Stay close to them at these times and you’ll have a happy camper. ---Sub-sub-set to the above sub-set: Ketchup, potato chips and ice cream (when taken separately) are more powerful than the Sauk vaccine. ---An ordinary fishing hook or bass lure can sit for years in a tackle box but once it comes into contact with the chemicals on the hands of a 10-year-old the same hook or lure will form an immediate magnetism and become attracted to every tree in the county. ---Subset: Do not stand behind a 6th-grader when she casts her first fishing line into the lake. ---Bedtime is really no problem when you’ve been dancing, running, eating, playing, singing, and laughing all day. ---The typical adolescent will grow up with a lifelong aversion and perhaps even hatred for the noble Scottish bagpipe when the instrument is used to wake them in the morning. Cost of pipes: about 500 bucks. The look on Johnny’s face when the bagpipes begin their wail beside his bunk: priceless. And perhaps my most important finding of all and one that I discover year after year…judging by the current crop of kids, our future is indeed in some wonderful hands.