I like – and choose to believe – that my personality defies classification, that I can’t be pigeonholed. Don’t you understand? I’m complicated. But the truth is, not so much. When you break it down, I’m easily categorized. At least according to Slate's recent story: “You Are How You Camped.” And to be honest, this is prompting a bit of an identity crisis.
Author Timothy Noah makes me a little nervous when he predicts adult personalities based on a person’s response to summer sleep-away camps. He compares this predictability to Rorschach testing and I’m inclined to agree. Noah lists five types of campers: People who don’t enjoy camp, people who hated camp so much that they made their parents bring them home, people who enjoy camp, people who really, really enjoy camp, and people who really, really, really enjoy camp. So which one am I?
Even though I just said that I defy classification, I clearly fall into the first two groups, but with caveats and loopholes. Obviously. Noah, himself, identifies as a person who didn’t enjoy camp:
So you can see why I don’t mind being in this first group. As a person who was perpetually homesick anywhere I went, Girl Scout Camp, in my case, was a struggle. When I say homesick, I literally mean sick. Not just crying, but full-on sobbing that inevitably lead to rampant puking. Back then I probably just considered myself “sensitive.” Unlike Noah, I probably would’ve enjoyed camp activities had I not been too concerned about where the nearest outhouse was. It wasn’t that I was anti-social. Just sensitive. I went on to become both bright and creative (I like to think). I bet Virginia Woolf had a tough time at camp. Wait, bad example. But still.
Now for the perplexing part. Noah moves on to describe “the people that hated camp so much they made their parents bring them home.” Tragically, I fit into this category too. I’m not terribly proud of it, but on two occasions I made my parents do just this. It doesn’t help matters that I was old enough to know better and that the camp in question was a mere hour from home. Again, my “sensitivity” got to me and I became the first Girl Scout in Camp Tapawingo history to be allowed to both call her parents and have them pick her up. And what does Noah have to say about this segment of society:
“These people should not be confused with the outlaws described above. There is nothing outré about not being able to endure summer camp. The come-and-get-me set grow up to be neurotic and needy. These are people who can often be heard on CSPAN's early-morning call-in program Washington Journal, filibustering from a time zone still blanketed in predawn darkness, until the host says, ‘Please state your question.’”
This puts me squarely in Ally McBeal and Woody Allen territory, neither of whom I have a problem with. But I will dispute the “needy” part. I would argue that we came home from camp purely because we just “love too much.” We love our friends and families so much that we can’t stand to be away from them for more than two days. He didn’t mention the valuable lesson we learned from being gigantic wusses, either. I, at least, learned that I should never again succumb to homesickness. If you give up and go home you will beat yourself up far more than if you make yourself stick it out. Whether it’s six days at Girl Scout Camp or two semesters of out-of-state college. Homesickness is pretty treatable. And besides, a little neuroses never hurt anyone.
