davywavy: (clarke savage)
[personal profile] davywavy
Every year, faced with the prospect of their delightful offspring littering up the place during their summer holidays, many parents arrange for their children to go to summer camps of one sort or another. It happened to me when I was younger - packed off to a renovated country house in the middle of nowhere with several dozen other surly twelve year olds for a week of activities like running, swimming, judo and watching Superman III as a treat. Fortunately I planned ahead and took my DnD books with me, meaning that me and the other fat kids got to vanish off at every opportunity and play Isle of Dread.
Looking back, I wonder if I spent my time as constructively as I might have done.
The idea of summer camps has always been bigger in Northern Europe and the USA than in this country; the physical puritanism of hard-line Protestantism has led to a lingering tradition of children being seen and not heard and an idea that fresh air and exercise is a good thing, especially if your child is an asthmatic with Polio. Twenty years ago in the UK there weren't so many options, but it's growing here, now, too.

As well as just the idea of summer activity holidays for your kids, there are specialist ones as well - if your child weighs 200lbs then you can send them to fat camp to have their excess pork trimmed from them by a laughing lunatic with a laser*, for example. If they're a gobby little shit who knows their own rights but nobody elses' then you can send them to 'brat camp' (ha ha). Or if you want them to grow up to be a glassy-eyed pod person, you can always send them to Jesus Camp instead.
What's important in the marketing of these places is that parents are a curious mix of jealous of the safety of their kids but they want rid of them for weeks at a time because they get in the way, and so it is vital that thse camps should sound reassuring. We've had the excellent depiction of Camp Chippewa ("It means 'orphan'") from Addams Family Values, but parents want something that sounds wholesome, fun, an above all safe for their kids, so names like 'Pine Valley Camp' and 'Young Bears Lodge' are de Rigeur. With this in mind, should I ever breed there's one camp whose name alone means that I would never, ever send my child there. It's this one.

*If this isn't really what happens at Fat Camp, I don't want to know.

Date: 2006-10-27 09:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gwaunquest.livejournal.com
All I can say is OH MY GOD! Still parents can't say there wasn't a hint in the Label. (Speaking as the mother of a disabled child who was sent home from the respite centre for being too violent to handle.)

Date: 2006-10-27 09:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] davywavy.livejournal.com
If I were a rampaging pervert, I have to say that 'Fiddle Fest' would sound too good to miss.

Date: 2006-10-27 12:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gwaunquest.livejournal.com
A bit lower down is mention of phrases not translating. I was looking at a US website the other day and noticed someone was described as "Legally Blind". I have racked my small amount of brain but can't come up with a definition of what "Illegaly Blind" would be.

Date: 2006-10-27 02:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrmmarc.livejournal.com
Legally Blind = They can see. They can see fine. OK, they may have some difficulties seeing but compared to someone who is blind, they can see.

HOWEVER- for wahetver reason they have decided to fight for the right to BE blind.
Hence- Legally Blind.

What can i say...
"We support Reg's RIGHT to be a woman!"
:)

Date: 2006-10-27 06:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gwaunquest.livejournal.com
What have you done to me? Now I can't stop laughing. This is almost as bad as the piece of paper I still have from when I worked for the MOD.{long story)

Date: 2006-10-27 11:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kcontheroad.livejournal.com
Now I get to be the transatlantic translator --

"Legally blind" means that their vision is so bad that it can't be corrected to a functional level, but they're not totally blind. All the same, I liked mrmmarc's answer better.

Date: 2006-10-27 11:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] susanofstohelit.livejournal.com
lol. also means that they can see, but can't see well enough to get a driver's license.

Date: 2006-10-28 01:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gwaunquest.livejournal.com
For anyone interested the MOD story in now on my LJ

Date: 2006-10-27 10:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kcontheroad.livejournal.com
I went to summer camp when I was growing up and I loved it. I went to a traditional roughing-it-outdoors camp most of the time and when I was older I went to a music camp a couple of times. Both were very positive experiences for me. I send my kids now, too, and they look forward to it all year. They're worried that when we move next summer they won't get to go to camp, but we'll manage it somehow.

Anyway, because I'm an uhurrrrikin, I had to look for a bit to realise what you didn't like about that name. Sounded like violins to me, you see. . . Thanks for the chuckle all the same.

And yes, I do look forward to having the kids away for a couple of weeks. As much as I adore them, everyone needs some time off, don't you think? Two weeks out of fifty-two isn't 'seen and not heard.'

Date: 2006-10-27 11:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] davywavy.livejournal.com
Kiddie-fiddler is standard slang over here. Some things may not translate.

Date: 2006-10-27 07:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kcontheroad.livejournal.com
Yeah, even this ignorant colonist was able to figure that out. ;) kiss!

Date: 2006-10-27 10:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gnommi.livejournal.com
OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! i can't BELIEVE they called it that

Date: 2006-10-27 11:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] davywavy.livejournal.com
It's comedy gold, ladies and gentlemen, comedy gold.

Date: 2006-10-27 12:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tooth-fairy.livejournal.com
Ha ha

I wish I had gone to summer camp, year after year of just loitering round where I lived got a bit boring.

Sending Anwen to summer camp is a good idea, not a pervy one though (even though she would probably do her hannibal lecter impression at them and scare them off)

Date: 2006-10-27 02:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrmmarc.livejournal.com
Summer Camp- why tolerate the wee ones?
When you can send them off to discover the whole wonderful world of bullying, conformity, underage sex, more bullying, soggy biscuit, and occsional perverts posing as staff...

... we british do not need to do that.
We have Boarding Schools to that man!

I had a few friends who worked at SUmmer Camps. Oen found herself wqorking with real inner city latino gang kids- the camp was run down, the place loked real drab and the kids places were paid for by some local authroity desperate to get them off the streets for a few weeks...
Another went to a MAJESTIC place in up state New York, which had a bigger equipment budget than OPEC's COMBINED makes in a year, filled with the well groomed offspring of New York lawyers and socialites...

The first one had the time of her LIFE. There was bugger all to do when you weren't looking after the kids, but she found it rewarding, humbling and life changing experience.
The latter was in HELL- spolit little New York Jewish Princesses, drug taking, underage sexual encounters, CONSTANT date-rape jokes and generally, while she COULD unwind by taking a speed boat out onto a lake- came away LOATHING her charges and all who spawned them.

Goes to show something, but unsure what...

Date: 2006-10-27 04:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] applez.livejournal.com
"Once...when I was at band camp..." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyson_Hannigan) ;-)
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