The Getting Older Thing
You know you’re old when the camp counselors you had as a child start getting married. You know the awesome, right out of high school, I’m-independent-and-nobody-can-tell-me-what-to-do-unless-it’s-"Have fun!" ones? When they get tied down and start thinking about a family, you know that you are on your way to becoming someone else’s former counselor who has a career and is married.
Three of my counselors got married in the past year or so, and more weddings are planned.
It’s scary.
The thing is, I always thought my counselors were really old in the first place. It would be eons until I got to high school, much less graduated and went to college. Those people were grown-ups, adults! Big people who could drive cars and go on dates and stay up past Carson (that Carson statement makes me feel old in itself, but that’s really who did The Tonight Show when I was ten). Someday, way, way, way in the future I’d be that old too.
Uh, well, way, way, way into the future wasn’t as way, way, way into the future as I thought.
I don’t feel like an adult. If I had to live by myself in the real world right now, I’d live off McDonalds, frozen pizza, and Chef Boyardee.
Last year when we were doing cabin introductions I said I was going to be a senior in high school.
"What grade is that?" one camper asked.
"Twelfth."
"Is that the last grade?"
"Yes, it is."
"Wow! You’re old! I mean, really old!"
That wasn’t what made them think I was Methusula though. That happened in the craft cabin one day when the same girl said, "I don’t think they had sparkly gimp back in the olden days."
"The olden days?" I asked. "When I was a camper they didn’t have sparkly gimp."
"Yeah," she said perfectly seriously. "In the olden days."
I wonder what this girl will think of me when she becomes a first time counselor and sees a sign announcing that I am getting married.
You know what would make a person feel really old? If they had to be a counselor for their counselor’s kids. I mean, that would do it for me right there. I’d start looking at old folks’ homes. I wonder if my counselors ever had my dad for a counselor. I bet I made them feel old. Good if I did, because now they are making me feel old by getting married and starting careers.
My dad doesn’t believe me when I tell him things about camp people, because he is stuck in the eighties and thinks that nothing has changed since his prime deaning days. He talks about the ‘good old days’ when they had those big logs to sit on by the campfire instead of the new benches.
There is one thing that hasn’t changed from the first time my dad counseled back in the olden days before sparkly gimp. The tarps. The ones with the holes that are eight inch in diameter and the frayed edges.
Those tarps will never die. My father used them. My grandchildren will use them. I bet George Olmstead and his buds used those tarps on the very first day of the first season of camp.