Letter From Summer Camp

Dear Family,

Bacon here from Summer Camp.  I’m settled in… well as much as I can be.  Mom dropped me off here on Saturday morning.  She introduced me around and showed me my cabin.  I’m rooming with 10 other peeps.  I walked around looking for the television and was told there isn’t one in the individual cabins.  What?  And we all have to share the bathroom.  Double What?  What kind of place is this Summer Camp?  How barbaric.  I couldn’t believe it when mom hugged me, told me goodbye and then left without me!  It took everything within me not to chase after her.

That afternoon, they left everyone to their own devices to settle in at our cabins.  We had a greet and meet that night before retiring to our cabins for the night.  First up, really mom?  You put me in a Summer Camp where we have to participate in activities… outside… in nature?  Do I really look like that kind of pig?  Then when I went to bed for the past couple of nights, there was no apple or treat on my pillow and no bedtime story.  Huh?  And a room-mate here bedding in this cabin actually called me a H.O.G.  It took all I could do not to rip into him but I didn’t.  I just did what came natural to me.  When he went to the bathroom, I dragged his blankets and pillow outside.  H.O.G.  Imagine that.  Me?  No way!

We get one hour of computer time at night after dinner.  ONE hour.  I gotta make it count so I’ll send you an email when I can.  Make sure Houdini takes care of my blog this week.  Tell everyone in blogville I miss them and when I survive this I will be back.  Much love to you, Bacon

 

Simpler Times

While Bacon is a camp this week, I want to focus on a few things that as adults we have forgotten about when we were children. LOL – this only makes sense since my little guy is away at Camp.  He grunted like he didn’t want to go but I think he secretly loved getting away and traveling like his pet rock.

It seems like when we were younger, that was the more simpler times in our lives.  As children we didn’t have bills or a lot of toys but it seemed like we had the world at our feet.  We went outside and played.  I mean ran around and played ball, climbed trees and searched for bugs and watched the moonlight. We played hopscotch and hide and go seek.  We socialized with other kids, screamed outside and had a blast.  As long as we were in ears reach of our parents when they called, we were rich with our nature.  Do you remember staying out late and catching lightening bugs? Or do you remember chasing frogs?

And oh should we discuss riding in the family car with our parents on long trips.  We didn’t use seat belts and look – we all survived which was amazing.  I remember going on vacation and we would leave at night and drive to our destination.  Us kids would be sacked out in the back of the car.  One of us would lay across the floorboards, one of us would get the seat to stretch out and one of us would sleep in the back window  The horror of not wearing seat belts!  Now *those* were the days.  And what about going to the lake.  You would throw a bunch of blankets in the back of the pick up truck so that you had a place to lay down after swimming all day so you could watch the stars in the sky.

We played so hard as children that when we went to bed we would have ‘growing pains’ in our legs from running all day.  Do you remember those?  But hey it was all worth it because the next day we would be out doing it all again.

And we watched the *good* cartoons like Scooby Doo, the Jetson’s, Tom and Jerry and the Flintstones.  Cartoons that actually made sense and are still fun to watch this day. And after dinner, we watched television with the parents until bed time.  Awesome shows like Happy Days, Fantasy Island, Mork and Mindy, Chips, Wonder Woman, the Facts of Life and Alice.  Who could forget Alice?  “Kiss my grits!”

What do you remember from childhood.  What did you do that you don’t see children doing these days?