Not long ago, the editor-in-chief of the Hudson Reporter newspaper chain, Caren Lissner, took a month off work to be a counselor at a metro area travel camp which she herself had attended as a teenager. The kids were much more financially well-off than she was. At last, she shares her harrowing story.
It was the last week in June, and a popular 13-year-old girl from central New Jersey was staring at me across the table at a Chinese restaurant.
“My boyfriend’s at sleepaway camp,” she seethed, “and he writes me letters saying the girls are [hooking up with] him.”
I decided to be reassuring. I told her that boys exaggerate and that he probably was barely doing anything. “Why?” she shot back. “Because YOU aren’t?”
Thus: One of my first lessons in kids today.
I had finagled a four-week furlough from my newspaper job so I could see how teenagers had changed in 15 years. I had attended the same pricey Long Island-based teen travel camp when I was 15. I had always wanted to try it as a counselor, and now, nearing 30, it might be my last chance.
So the last week in June, I boarded the charter bus with 40 kids and three counselors for our first week of travel camp. We were slated to go sightseeing in Boston. The fiery-eyed girl and her two friends, from a wealthy central New Jersey town, had already squeezed into a bus seat for two and refused to move. It was going to be a long trip.
There was hope, though. As we tumbled off the bus after an hour ride, to have lunch a Connecticut McDonald’s, a bright-eyed short boy named Sam who always wore a baseball cap looked up at me.
“The girls on this trip,” he said, and two other boys nodded in agreement, “well, not all of them, but some of them – are soooo princessy.”
I realized something: It would be the boys, not the girls, who would be my allies on this trip.
One night in Boston
Our lodging for the first night was at a hotel in Boston. The way the travel camp worked was this: Each Monday, we’d take the bus from New York City to a different locale. We’d spend a week sightseeing there with the kids, and then take them home.
The four counselors – including our head counselor, Eric, a special ed teacher from Queens – stood in the hallway firming up the list of roommates for that night. A girl came out of her hotel room to talk to us. “Jonathan’s crying,” she reported.
Jonathan was an overweight yet popular kid. “Why is he crying?” I asked.
“Because you guys put him in a room with Kyle and Tyler.”
Kyle and Tyler were cousins with oddly-shaped punk haircuts. Kyle, the older one, wore an earring. While some of the kids in camp had N’Sync dye jobs, Kyle and Tyler were more avant garde.
The girl said, “Jonathan said the two of them opened up a Bible, and they were praying to Satan.”
My co-counselor rolled her eyes in disbelief.
I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Why on Earth had I asked for a leave from work to subject myself to the same aggravation I’d had as a teenager on my own tour? Back then, the only girl I’d been friends with was the anorexic one who didn’t eat anything and didn’t talk. The good news was, she gave me all her desserts.
Breakfast
Breakfast on the tour was optional each day, so only a few kids tumbled out of bed for the meal. The first morning, a trio of popular girls from Long Island showed up. I sat with them, although I was a bit nervous. Who would have thought I’d be almost 30 and still nervous about popular girls?
“What are we doing today?” asked blonde Susan, lazily sliding a soggy piece of pancake around her plate. “Going to a Red Sox game,” I informed her.
“I don’t want to go,” piped up Susan’s dark-haired friend, Jessica. “I’m scared. Last time I went to a baseball game, a ball hit someone and killed him. Well, it didn’t kill him, but like, his eye popped out. It was disgusting.” I knew I had to jot this down verbatim. I grabbed my tiny notebook from my purse and scribbled in it.
A few minutes later, I had to get up and go to the bathroom. When I returned, all three girls were looking at me and giggling.
“What?” I asked. They kept giggling.
“What?”
They giggled some more.
I got that sinking feeling. Was there butter on my nose? Was my hair a mess? Had I worn the wrong clothes? The “in” styles on the tour were Abercrombie & Fitch shirts, Prada bags, Steve Madden shoes, and Tiffany heart bracelets. Any girl who didn’t wear those was regarded as inferior.
The three girls kept giggling.
“WHAT?!”
Finally, Jessica said, “Can we see your book?”
“What book?”
“The little notebook you wrote in,” she said. “Are you a spy?”
The two trios of popular girls could be taunting or kind, depending on how they felt at the moment. And that was exactly what adolescent popularity comes down to: Power. One day, the three girls from New Jersey converged on an unpopular girl who was crying because she was homesick, and they cheered her up. But another day, they accused a different group of girls of trying to steal from their suitcases.
Situation gets testy
Within three days, the class divisions on the bus came to a head – particularly because of the popular girls accusing the other girls of stealing from their suitcases.
As we were heading back from a Massachusetts bumper car park in the dark, with the tiny yellow lights on the bus ceiling glowing down on our faces, Eric, the head counselor, grabbed the microphone at the front of the bus. He launched into what would become known as The Speech.
The Speech went on for about 20 minutes.
The Speech resulted in angry calls from upper-class parents for days.
“Some of you guys are being really mean to each other,” Eric said. “All of you seem very concerned about name brands. You act like you choose who to hang out with based on people’s clothes and which bracelet they wear. Well, you know what? I don’t even know if half your Prada bags are real. And if all you are is a brand name, if all you care about is clothes and jewelry, then you should call Tiffany’s and tell them they ruined your summer!” There was silence. You could hear a CD drop.
Then, we heard sobbing. It was coming from the popular girls in the back.
Eric placed the microphone back in its holder uncertainly.
A girl ran up to Eric, her face swollen and red.
“Jessica and Susan just ripped off their Tiffany’s and said they refuse to wear them!” she yelled angrily. A quiet boy named Seth with an N’Sync dye job came up to the front of the bus.
“I just wanted to say, that was a good speech,” he said to Eric.
“Thanks,” Eric said.
Tyler, of Tyler and Kyle fame, came up.
He silently shook Eric’s hand. Then he returned to his seat.
At night, I made rounds to the hotel rooms. Three of the popular girls dove behind their bed when I went into their room.
“We thought you were Er-ic,” one of them sneered. “We don’t want to see Er-ic.”
A day later, after parents called to complain (naturally), Eric made an apologetic speech on the bus and admitted he might have gone too far.
But the speech might have done some good. The kids seemed less divided. Some of the unpopular kids had consoled the popular ones. They were together now.
And it provided great comic relief later on.
Talent show
A talent show was planned for the next to last day of camp. The popular girls, although they’d forgiven Eric, rehearsed a song in the back of the bus that they’d made up about Eric’s famous Speech. It went to the tune of “Yankee Doodle:”
Eric Goldberg went to camp
on tour bus forty three-ee
When he first met all of us
He thought that we were [princess]-y!
Then he gave a stupid speech
that made us all cry-y.
But he only made it ’cause
He thought that he was fly!
Later he apologized
and said he didn’t mean it
, So we told our moms and dads
not to have a [s***] fit!
The Thursday of the talent show, we sat around the hotel pool to watch the kids perform.
Two boys did a rendition of the Beastie Boys’ song “Girls.” Other kids did gymnastics.
The six popular girls – the Long Island trio bonding with the Central Jersey trio – were the last to go. They sang several songs that they’d made up about how they had learned to love camp. One song said they’d be friends forever.
Beneath their rough exteriors, the girls really wanted to be good. And when they were bad, they weren’t that much more foul-minded as some of the kids I’d gone to camp with (although we didn’t talk about oral sex as much). Things may have changed, but not that much.
However, I kept waiting for the song about the Speech, and it never came.
After the talent show, I bumped into the popular girls in the hallway of our hotel. I asked them why they hadn’t sung their song about The Speech.
Jessica hung her head.
“We meant to do it,” she said. “We forgot.”
The next day, they found out they’d won first prize.
A version of this essay appeared earlier this summer at www.knotmag.com. Lissner’s other writing is accessible at www.carenlissner.com. Her first novel, Carrie Pilby, was published last year. E-mail her at liZZner@aol.com.