Letter from a Camp Counselor

For 14 years, I spent my summers at Camp Classen, first as a camper, then as a counselor, then as the person who trains campers to be counselors.

Here are some of the lessons I learned working there:

Drink water. If you don’t, you will get overheated, pass out, and have an IV stuck in your arm for two hours. Hydrate, don’t dehydrate.

Kids have zero filters. Standing outside the dining hall, waiting for food, an 8-year-old boy walks up with a learn-to-read Jurassic Park book. “Counselor,” he asks gravely, “what is bio-ethical misconduct?”

Use names.  “Stop, Jimmy,” works. “Cut it out, kid,” doesn’t.

How to identify poison ivy. Leaves of three, leave them be. Black and yellow, don’t pick up snakes; red and black, don’t pick up snakes. The North Star is part of the Little Dipper and is brighter in the country. The planet Mars shines red. Raccoons like trash. Tree rings tell a story. The sun sets at 9:30 p.m., and the hill overlooking the lake has the best view in the world.

If you want to make money, work at Kroger. Or at McDonald’s. Do childcare. Go into landscaping. Make a lemonade stand and spend two hours a day at a neighborhood corner. You would still make more than a camp counselor, and you would do less.

Camp is a bubble. Everyone in the cabin is, by very definition, a friend. Life’s biggest problem is painting our cabin’s rock the best. Problems differ beyond the fence. Once, one boy, sitting during campfire, refused to sing along.“I don’t like the song ‘Father’s House,’” he confessed. “Probably ’cause I don’t have a dad.”

“Hard work” is hard work. Ever spent a day pickaxing cement, carrying chunks of concrete down a mountain, hauling planks of timber back up, and building new benches on a hilltop chapel? Add some friends and a soundtrack, and it’s not half bad.

Friends. Jojo. Bobo. Hunter. Katherine. Whitney. Andrew. Meredith. Karen. Adie. Wyatt. Zach. And a lifetime’s more.

Use sunscreen. The average July afternoon in Oklahoma is 95 degrees. The endless sunshine is fun, exciting, relentless, grueling, and unforgettable. It comes in waves; it pulses like a heartbeat. The light can burn, but if you embrace it and break past that first wall of heat, there’s a sea of dodgeballs, laughter, and s’mores. As a counselor, you have to make sure all your kids put on sunscreen, and you also have to remember to put some on yourself. I recommend SPF 50.

Sometimes kids remember what you teach them. 

Sometimes kids don’t. 

Often, you never know. If you watch closely – if you’re lucky – you can catch kids taking your advice at archery, using the French words you taught them while they sword fight, finally remembering the word of the week, offering to help clean, or even inviting the kid sitting on the sidelines to join in the campfire songs. Not always. But sometimes.

Joshua Forbes, the favorite nephew of People Newspapers editor William Taylor, graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, in May.