What I've Learned from Camp: You'll Always Be Dry Again
Anyone who’s ever been to camp knows the value of being dry. Those precious moments when you are neither sweating, nor having a water bottle dumped over your head nor being rained on often seem few and far between. Dryness is something you bask in, and preserve as long as you can, because you don’t know when you’ll be dry again. But you will be.
This summer I had the privilege of working with the C.I.T.s at my camp. It’s sort of an unspoken tradition that they are permitted to ‘fall’ in the lake, in which there is no swimming allowed. I did it when I was a C.I.T. and it was glorious. Our counselors watched from the dock, laughing to themselves about the little things that could make 15 year olds feel so special. And we sure did feel special. We were breaking a rule, a pretty serious rule at that, while staff members watched and they didn’t care. I guess it’s a little silly, but we were on top of the world.
Well on a hot day in June, came the lake session when my own C.I.T.s wanted to ‘fall’ in. They had been planning all day. Just as my counselors had, I sat on the dock watching them, as they first nervously rocked their canoes and eventually grew so bold as to stand straight up and jump from them. It sort of paralleled with how I had watched them grow all along. I had seen them take risks and build confidence. I’d heard them trying out their stern counselor voices and solving their own problems without any help from me. And now as I watched them jump in the lake, I was so proud, even to see them breaking a few rules.
Then they asked me to come in.
Now mind you, I was dry. I was actually shower fresh and very content to sit on the dock in the glow of the setting sun. Nothing was further from my mind than the idea of submerging myself in fishy, stale smelling, algae encrusted water.
But they asked me to come in. So I grabbed a life jacket, and I went in.
That evening was probably one of the best I had all summer. I don’t remember the way I smelled, or how my sopping wet shorts stuck to my thighs as I walked back from the lake. Tonight, I’m at my desk, dry as a bone, with only the best of feelings about that night. For a moment, I got to be 15, and more importantly, I got to share that moment with a bunch of kids who mean the world to me. I can’t say I’d have regretted it if I had stayed on the dock, but I would have unknowingly missed out on a perfect moment. I suppose what I learned at camp this summer was not to let myself miss out on permanent memories because of temporary and trivial consequences. You might only get one shot to jump in the lake, but you’ll always be dry again someday.
romaincrisis
dailybridgerton
2087
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
