Romance Around the Campfire

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One topic that came up as we reminisced around the campfire during my 50th camp reunion was the romances that had sprung up each summer. The girls I had known from camp shared a bond of four or more years, spending eight weeks together. We went on wilderness canoe trips a week at a time. We climbed Mt. Washington and several more of the Presidential peaks together. We were buff, brazen and seriously boy-crazy.

The first subject that came up was all the male counselors and lifeguards at the boys’ camp. Hubba-Hubba. In fact, I probably saw their grandsons out lifeguarding the day before when I went sailing. Adorable . . . except when they asked if I could sail and I told them I had taught sailing. They still walked my Sunfish out of the bay not letting go until my sails were full. They were just so cute, and I obviously looked to them as if I was on borrowed time.

Not that their grandfathers gave me more than a passing glance and then I am sure as an annoyance. Yes, we all agreed that as much as we were smitten by the counselors at the boys’ camp, we were little more than a nuisance to them. This only made us try harder, but not in the eyelash batting, shrill giggling way. More like in the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” way.

I remember once the lifeguards were showing off to each other by all trying to move a telephone pole that had been set down as a bench of sorts. No one could move it more than a few inches. That’s when I challenged them saying they owed us free ice cream at the camp store if the 5 girls in my posse could move the telephone pole three feet in five minutes. Laughing, they agreed. I had found a long steel pole. Using it as a lever, the girls easily rolled the pole down the beach. Score, at least ice cream. It is not like at 14 we would have known what to do if any of them actually liked us anyway.

Several summers went by and we were all old enough to be in a Counselor In Training program. Again, the body building lifeguards were proving their manhood by swimming across the cove to Black Point, about. 1/2 mile round trip swim. I hatched a plot. We all started serious training during free swim. We were swimming 50 laps between our dock and the next one along the lake everyday for four weeks. On the last week of camp, I swam a solo distance swim not to, but past Black Point, then past Squirrel Island, Moose Island and all the way to Rattlesnake Island. That was about three miles. Then camp was over and the girls’ camp held the longest distance swim record ever made. In fact, we held that record for several years until later when they instituted the three-mile swim from Rattlesnake Island back to camp for every Counselor In Training, boys and girls. Yup, when it came to boys that ignored you, our rule was, “If they won’t join you, then beat them.”

Around the campfire I was sad to hear that several of those great guys had since passed away. But the fun we had teasing them, having raids on their cabins, swooning as they walked by . . . those are memories that will last a lifetime.
One of the younger boys at the reunion, now in his 60s, asked me if I had been flirting with him at camp. “Yes, of course I flirted with you,” I answered. “Oh, I never was sure.” Here’s a tip, I told him, if you think any other girl you ever met was flirting with you, don’t wait 50 years to ask her. Act now! This brings me to a moral, it may be too late to retrieve the love of your life when you were 14, but act like you’re 14 now and you might have just as much fun.

Sally Franz is a former stand-up comedian, motivational speaker, and radio host. She is a twice-divorced mother of two and a grandmother of three. Sally has a degree in gerontology and several awards for humor writing. She is the author of Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey
and The Baby Boomers Guide to Menopause.