Summer camp a change from Oakland, plus candy

Every summer I trade in my textbooks and calculators for a Nalgene and bug spray and head to… Every summer I trade in my textbooks and calculators for a Nalgene and bug spray and head to my dual life as a counselor at a summer camp for WASPy New England kids, internationals and token scholarship campers. I may only make a quarter of what all my friends grilling at Burger King all summer make, but it’s the greatest job in the world – getting paid to lord over small children all day amidst the tranquil beauty of central Maine.

Camp life plays tricks on your head, however – it can become isolating when the only news you hear daily is about what counselors hooked up in Fry Field last night and about which of the 13 year olds still wet the bed.

The most special part about camp – and the most mysterious – is the legendary Candy Drop, capital letters. Nobody is sure when it’s going to strike except for the camp director – not even the counselors. New campers are initiated into knowledge of it through hushed discussion with more seasoned veterans. Speculation and rumors run rampant. All anyone knows is that one fateful day at camp meeting, a faint distant engine will be heard in the distance for an instant and suddenly a two-propeller airplane whooshes over camp.

This is immediately followed by hundreds of campers sprinting to the soccer field, where the plane proceeds to make about five or six passes overhead, showering the children below with hordes of candy. Imagine Christmas and New Year’s Eve rolled into one, and you have a faint idea of the excitement and pandemonium that reigns.

A few counselors are always assigned to the goal post beat to assure that nobody runs into one of the poles while their gaze is averted skyward. In the end, a trail is left of unwrapped Snickers and broken dreams, as the cabins glumly measure up how much candy they have amassed in comparison to everyone else – Forbidden Planet, the oldest boys cabin, is usually the odds-on favorite to dominate, what with the advantage of having less distance between themselves and the plane.

The true Candy Drop drama revolves around who gets to ride in the plane, however. The two spots in the passenger seats are the camp counselor equivalent of Knighthood. Usually a fourth-year counselor – or in controversial cases, a third-year counselor who has proven himself as an upstanding staff member – is tapped for the go suddenly one fateful day, usually after weeks of rampant speculation.

I imagine that this all seems rather mundane. But I know of at least five counselors who continued to make their decision to work at camp year after year – summers after they’ve graduated from college – merely because it was their dream to go up in the plane. The allure of the Drop seat is too great, as is the chance to earn a spot in the pantheon of Candy Drop history.

Everyone remembers the Drop of ’01 in which a well-known counselor ended his camp career by completely missing the field on every go. The trees around the tennis court are still purported to be littered with stray Starburst. Another goofball in ’04 made history with the first Raisin Drop, throwing out raisins and cough drops, much to the chagrin of the campers. And of course, there was last year’s unprecedented Double Drop – one in the morning and one in the evening, a masterstroke that not even the most experienced Dropee could have predicted.

One hour of tossing out candy to hordes of ungrateful kids – it might not seem like much of a tradition. But it represents something primal and magical that moves people – as if one fateful day when we least expect it, a tiny little airplane carrying all of our dreams and desires will just show up on the horizon and zoom over to finally douse us in all we have ever dreamed of. This is the reason why several people will give up months of their life to continue at camp.

That’s what camp life does you – puts everything in perspective. It’s a world where you’re only as strong as the grape juice you drink, the tree stumps you dance on and the 12 year olds making out in the outhouse that you bust. As much as I love South Oakland and the Friday night sweepstakes, it’s nice to be able to retreat to a world of crickets and lazy games of kickball and first kisses in treehouses.

In an uncertain world, I’m glad there’s a place to escape to that emphasizes that all that really matters is that you play fair and treat everyone like you would want to be treated. It’s good for the kids too.

What’s your favorite flavor of bug juice? E-mail Daron Christopher djc14@pitt.edu.