I don’t know if you remember me. But I will definitely always remember you, and the lesson you taught me.
You’re probably a little confused because I doubt you remember what happened. It was June. I was 11 or 12, and it was my first year in camp. I was shy and timid and petrified to meet 85 other kids my age who I didn’t know at all. The thought of being in a huge sleepaway camp where I didn’t know a single face scared me out of my wits. I was terrified of being so far from home, but I wanted so badly to be big and to go to camp. So I broke a sacred rule of being big and going to sleepaway camp — I brought a teddy bear along with me. Don’t laugh. I needed that teddy bear for moral support. He was a cute little bear, brown and fuzzy and a little smaller than the size of my hand. I brought him along with me and hid him under my pillow. At night, under the cover of darkness, when I was sure the whole bunk was asleep, I would reach under my pillow and pull him out. I would squeeze this little bear in my hand as homesickness overcame me. For the first week or so, I would cry to my little bear in the pitch-black bunkhouse almost every night. I hid him during the day, of course; I knew I was too big to have a teddy bear. But I needed the support so badly.
The first week or two of camp was hard. I was shy, I didn’t know anyone. It was hard to put myself out there and try to make friends. I was used to being together with my three closest friends, and now I was thrown into the deep end and told to swim. I was finding it hard to stay afloat. Homesickness and loneliness threatened to capsize my boat under the storm they created in my heart. I had wanted so badly to go to camp but now that I was there, I wasn’t sure this was where I wanted to be. And so, night after night I would cry to my little teddy bear. During the day, just the thought of him sitting there, waiting for me under my pillow, gave me strength to be brave and to make friends.
Slowly, as the days went by, I found myself enjoying camp more. I had become friendly with a few of the girls, I was starting to find my footing, and I no longer felt like an outsider anymore. Maybe camp isn’t so bad after all, I thought. I can do this, and I can have a great time. Life in camp was looking up, things were good.
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