The Best Kind of Blackout: Reflections from a Camp Weekend Devoid of Technology

In this thrilling installment, we find our heroine once again gearing up for a 4-day summer camp in the wild, unpredictable suburb wilderness of Hanover, VA. For those of you unfamiliar with my story on why I go to camp, you should probably stop stalking me. Or keep stalking me and read the abbreviated Twitter-approved version: 


- My best friend lost her mom to breast cancer while we were both in college at #Elon. I found this summer camp for children who have had a parent or sibling loss. We volunteered together and have been doing it ever since. #longstoryshort 



You should know up-front that I had a really deprived childhood; I never went to a summer sleepaway camp. My negligent parents made us do things like go to the beach and take family vacations to Yellowstone National Park. We had chores to do in the morning. CHORES! And we couldn't even ride our bikes to the pool until they were done. While that's not exactly the kind of depravity that would make for a mopey Eminem song, best believe that a part of me always felt like I should have gone to camp. I love the 'ruggedly self-reliant' thrill of it all. It's daring and safe all at the same time. The fact that I was probably 14 years old before I could spend the night at a friend's house without calling my mom to pick me up is irrelevant; I missed out on camp and I love that I have a second-chance to drink the bug juice now that I'm 26. 


At Comfort Zone Camp, the volunteers are matched 1-1 with a "Little Buddy" camper; mine this year was the same one from last year. I'll call her Z. She's phenomenal and after camp I really had to suppress the urge to throw her in the back of my Jeep Liberty, take her to get Slushees at 7-11 and be BFF's with her every day. From last Thursday afternoon until Sunday evening, I silenced my Droid with the stroke of a finger and prepared for a weekend without feeling the pervasive 'buzz, buzz, PING!' of my phone. (That's the sound it makes when real people call me, I bet.) 

"It's 'I Hope We Never Part', now get it right or pay the price!!!" 

 Here are some things (for better or worse) That I got to skip out on this past weekend: 


- Since I didn't go to work on Friday, I didn't get to play my favorite 10:30 game "Am I Bored, or Am I Hungry?" (Spoiler alert: I'm usually both. The cure seems to be Diet Coke. Which I also didn't have this past weekend.) 


- Literally 196,209 important news stories happened and I missed all of them. At the top of MY news desk was "Saturday Night Dinner: Will this taco meat cause me and my entire cabin indigestion, or will it be the 5 boxes of stale, damp Oreos that I parceled out as a snack? Find out at 11." 


- The only Super-Pac I was concerned with was my backpack, which WAS super in every sense of the word: it held my waterproof Uno cards, lanyard craft string, giant scissors, stale damp Oreos, a Buzz Lightyear flashlight, band-aids, 6 tee shirts, a sticky roll of lifesavers from LAST camp, bug spray, hand sanitizer, and 5-Hour Energy (which BTW kills spiders. Take that for what it's worth.) 


- Saturday night came and went, and I didn't get to play my OTHER favorite game: "Is This Shockoe Party Girl Wearing a Skirt, a Tube Top, or a Really Stretchy Bracelet?"  


- For four days, I didn't once look at or inquire what ingredients went into the food/beverages I consumed. I told myself that SOMEWHERE in nature there had to be a berry that would produce electric- blue, lemon-flavored juice and just drank it. 


- I got all hot & bothered last weekend, but it had nothing to do with vodka, losing my debit card, or crying in the bathroom of Cha-Cha's; I was putting everything I had into coming up with the perfect skit for "silent charades." Oh, and it had to include 16 people, 8 of them kids. And it couldn't be inappropriate. 


- No ice. I had no ice in my drinks all weekend. So...


- A trillion cute/memorable/life-affirming moments happened over the course of 4 days, but nary one tweet was twit about them. But I know they happened, and I remember them. They're as real to me as anything Facebooker T. Overshare would Instagram. 




So, to "debrief" (a new buzzword I learned that means "quietly hand your Little a handful of Chex Mix so they don't fall asleep, get restless, or ask what time it is") I LOVED taking some time off from adult life. Turns out, I don't have to be Buzz-Fed every day in order to survive. I had the most generous, happy, engaging people boosting me up every second of every day. Maybe if EVERYONE had that, we wouldn't need as much battery-powered crap. #pointstoponder. [sent from my iPad]


To everyone out there who thinks that a 4-day camping trip might be just the thing you need, may I suggest a giant group excursion to the wilderness, maybe around the Election weekend? We can bring our own Super-Pacs, maybe some vodka, and since it's also the weekend of my birthday, I'll even chip in for some stale, damp Oreos. 






Think about it and get back to me.