Notes On Camp- This American Life

This podcast episode by "This American Life" drags listeners into the innocent world of childhood summer camps and the great experiences that come along with every attendance. This episode specifically takes place at a pair of camps in Michigan, Lake of the Woods and Greenwoods. Lake of the Woods is a girls summer camp, wheras Greenwoods is a boys summer camp. And as with every child they always think that their group, or camp in this case, is always the best. This program captivates the different emotions, practices, and events that are all a part of summer camp. Also, it sets out to try and grasp the idea of how people who don't go to summer camp just don't understand the fun and amazement involved. The speaker tries to explain such feats by saying how children "feel as if they are part of a team" while in summer camp, as if they always have to be collaborating and working together in order to accomplish tasks and "survive" in the camp world. Since it is so hard to explain, a guest on the episonde had to simply put it as "two weeks of summer camp will change your life."

The very first segment is titled "Mr. Popular" and delivers the story of Dave, a camp counselor who had been participating in the camp since the age of 11. Dave appears to be a celebrity amongst the kids as he is introduced and would most likely acheive a "Lifetime Acheivement" award from the camp if there was such an honor. Dave had loved going to the camp so much as a child that he could not keep himself away from it as he grew up. He simply HAD to become a counselor in his eyes. Dave descibes his experiences with camp and the campers as "the best experiences of his life," experiences that many people "just don't understand."

The next section, and easily my favorite, is about unique camp horror stories. Every camp has their own mystifying and obscene ghost tales of ghouls and legends. In this specific camp, one of these infamous spoken word stories describe as a legend of a giant "Turtle Man," a former bully of a camp counselor, that creeps out of the water to claim its next unsuspecting victim of the camp. Also, more commonly known ghost stories are present in all summer camps, such as the story of "Bloody Mary." We get to hear the camp children lock themselves in the dark bathroom to try and see "Bloody Mary" in the mirror, demonstrating how gullable some of these children may be when living together for weeks in such an isolated land. But this isolation is what makes camp so much fun for most of these kids. It feels as if they are secluded in their own piece of make believe reality that allows them to do nothing but live off of each others ideas and thoughts.