Inflated

But so has the price of bread and eggs and tomato sauce. I sighed as I typed my credit card number into Camp Popular’s portal.

That was before my daughter came home from her camp reunion last week. (She’d left practically in tears because what should she weeeeaaaaaarrrr? Everything she owns, including the outfit we bought specifically for this event was neerrrdddyy.) As she showed off her swag, I understood the sudden hike in fees. Even with corporate and bulk discounts, the stuff in her branded tote bag easily added up to at least $50 — a branded watch (that no one could wear when everyone else has a Michelle watch), a logoed water bottle (Contigo knockoff — it was leaking within a day), and a fully loaded MP3 with all the camp songs. Stuff we definitely don’t need and mostly don’t want.

This problem, unfortunately, starts young. My four-year-old had birthday day at his backyard day camp. His counselor let us know she’d be giving out ice cream the next day. How adorable, I thought. Yum, I want to go to day camp tomorrow. Then I continued reading. Morah asked for $5 per kid to cover the cost. Okay, that’s weird. How much does a tub of ice cream and a package of cones cost? But the next day, my son told me all about the ice cream shop where they went to celebrate birthdays. Really? Tell me with a straight face that giving out yummy ice cream in a cone with sprinkles would not be good enough for a four-year-old. If you can, imagine what’s coming for you when that kid hits an age that has actual opinions.

Everyone knows that in Rome, you do as the Romans, and that when you send your daughter to camp, you are resigning yourself to making sure she has exactly what everyone else has, down to the right shade shower caddy (not from the dollar store, that is sooo nebby!). For the most part, personally, I ignored this. My daughter’s caddy came from Dollar Tree, and if she wouldn’t make friends because hers was peach while theirs were mauve, who needs friends like that anyway — but you get the point.