Scars

1. The first time my mother packed me off to day camp (because it was good for me) I was 6 and I got mumps. One of the group leaders shouted at me for being a big baby, but wouldn’t you have cried in a corner too if you’d had mumps?

2. It was my mother’s belief that nothing builds up character like camp. Day camp, summer camp, skiing camp, just camp. She herself had been sent to many camps as a child, and look at her! I felt deep inside that if camp had forged her character, I wanted nothing to do with it.

3. To this day she’s still knee-deep in denial about the shoeboxful of pathetic postcards sent to her own parents, dictated by the nazi camp leaders. They all go something like: dear parents, I’m having fun; today we had pasta for lunch. Last night we went for a hike and I hardly got lost in the woods at all. Then she would sneak in a PS : please send money and a file in a loaf of bread.

4. (I’ve kept the shoebox for possible blackmail opportunities.)

5. The second time my mother packed me off to camp, (because it was good for me) history repeated itself; I was forced to take a hike at night and I got lost in the woods. It was written, mother.

6. The third time my mother packed me off to camp, someone stole my brand new copy of the Famous Five and my packet of marshmallows. To this day I can’t think about this incident without clenching my fists. Fuckers.

7. Later came the Language Trips. She didn’t call them camps, because she’d taken a course in slyness by then. So she packed me off to England when I was 11, because she had done the same thing at 13 and she had decided I was precocious. The family I was staying with were great; in order to not embarrass me with language too sophisticated for my level, they ignored me and left my packed lunch on the steps for me to pick up on my way out every morning.

8. Afterwards, things got better, because I learnt enough English to go to McDonald’s and buy myself some food. I went to Dublin many times, decided I hated everything English; then I went to Cambridge and loved England again. I knew many host families; I was robbed of my pocket money and called a frog by the children in the family, and almost adopted in Cork. I had home- made apple pie and strong tea in Ireland, and fish fingers and orange squash in Salisbury.

9. That bit was good for me. Thanks, mum.

10. I’m packing myself off to camp! I’ve turned down the host family option, though.