When summer came round, I started to notice this thing called 'summer camp'. At first I paid no attention to it; I figured it was probably much like the school camps back in Singapore, where you send a class of kids away to some chalet in Pasir Ris for a few days. But then I started to think, maybe it's a lot bigger than that.
There were the advertisements everywhere; there were even the charity calls for donations so that less privileged kids can be sent to summer camp. I was mystified. Why were there huge posters in the bus-stops about summer camp? And why was it a huge deal that money be donated so that a kid can go to summer camp? I mean, I seriously doubt the kids would die if they don't go to summer camp...
I saw a young teenage boy busking a few times; his sign read, "Send me to summer camp."
And then, there was the news story a few weeks back about a girl in Quebec who was grounded by her father because she was caught on an online dating site (she was underaged, 14 I believe). Fair enough right? Part of the grounding includes not being able to go for a 3-day school trip. She was so pissed (particularly about the school trip) she took her father to court... and won. I'm just flabbergasted. Apparently the lynch-pin in the argument was that of the school trip; that it was some really important event in a young teenage girl's life.
There were also the numerous NY times articles. For example, camps that cost $10,000 for tuition (sounds like a university education), policing checks on conselors' web pages, summer theatre camps, and so on.
Am I missing something out here? Is summer camp like some terribly crucial teenage rite of passage, like the prom night? (Again, prom night here is a cultural phenomenon. I guess we can't really grasp its significance merely from movies and other media. Singaporean JC kids try to emulate the hype but sometimes it falls really flat. It's like trying to celebrate Christmas when you're not even Christian.)
So I asked some colleagues. They were like, nah, it's no big deal. It's just something for working parents to send their kids to get them out of their hair over summer holidays. They seemed a little embarrassed and changed the topic quickly.
Ok... so I guess (and these are all my personal conjectures) it's more the media hype than anything else. I guess summer camp is a big deal but not that big a deal. And I'm also guessing that, like many teenage experiences, it was probably a huge thing back then, but when you're twenty-plus and looking back, you wonder why and what you worked yourself all up for.
There were the advertisements everywhere; there were even the charity calls for donations so that less privileged kids can be sent to summer camp. I was mystified. Why were there huge posters in the bus-stops about summer camp? And why was it a huge deal that money be donated so that a kid can go to summer camp? I mean, I seriously doubt the kids would die if they don't go to summer camp...
I saw a young teenage boy busking a few times; his sign read, "Send me to summer camp."
And then, there was the news story a few weeks back about a girl in Quebec who was grounded by her father because she was caught on an online dating site (she was underaged, 14 I believe). Fair enough right? Part of the grounding includes not being able to go for a 3-day school trip. She was so pissed (particularly about the school trip) she took her father to court... and won. I'm just flabbergasted. Apparently the lynch-pin in the argument was that of the school trip; that it was some really important event in a young teenage girl's life.
There were also the numerous NY times articles. For example, camps that cost $10,000 for tuition (sounds like a university education), policing checks on conselors' web pages, summer theatre camps, and so on.
Am I missing something out here? Is summer camp like some terribly crucial teenage rite of passage, like the prom night? (Again, prom night here is a cultural phenomenon. I guess we can't really grasp its significance merely from movies and other media. Singaporean JC kids try to emulate the hype but sometimes it falls really flat. It's like trying to celebrate Christmas when you're not even Christian.)
So I asked some colleagues. They were like, nah, it's no big deal. It's just something for working parents to send their kids to get them out of their hair over summer holidays. They seemed a little embarrassed and changed the topic quickly.
Ok... so I guess (and these are all my personal conjectures) it's more the media hype than anything else. I guess summer camp is a big deal but not that big a deal. And I'm also guessing that, like many teenage experiences, it was probably a huge thing back then, but when you're twenty-plus and looking back, you wonder why and what you worked yourself all up for.
No comments:
Post a Comment