I call it summer camp syndrome, because I first noticed its bizarre effects during my first trip to summer camp. I was in the fifth grade, and my friend Becky and I were spending two weeks in the woods at a co-ed camp. After four days, Becky was the girlfriend of Kevin, a guy we'd condemned on the first day when he'd eaten a live spider.
What we had once deemed disgusting became, in Becky words, "cool." As in, "Kevin's so cool, he isn't afraid of anything, not even spiders." Funny enough, two days after we returned home, Kevin morphed back into a gross boy who ate live bugs for the purposes of his own entertainment. I was forbidden to ever mention that Becky once had referred to him as her boyfriend. It was my first documented case of the dreaded syndrome.
During the next summer I found six of my cabin mates and myself vehemently disliking our eighth bunkmate because after she said anything at all she giggled, and she announced when she was going to the bathroom. In any other situation, we probably would have overlooked these flaws, but under our circumstances they became reason enough to exclude her from free-time activities. Again, I witnessed the irrationality caused by the disease.
Whenever you put a group of people in an isolated situation, they come to either passionately love or hate each other.
On average, it takes five days for these arbitrary passions to set in, but once out of the woods, recovery occurs within the first 24 to 36 hours. As soon as one reconnects with society, their old sensibilities return and they tend to renounce the choices they made while suffering from the syndrome.
One's susceptibility to the disease does not diminish as he or she gets older; rather, passions flare even more. I learned this a couple of years ago when I returned to summer camp as a counselor.
At our first night of staff training in June, the camp director told us that inevitably we would develop crushes on each other and that was fine with her as long as we didn't let the campers know of our relationships. My co-counselor, Delia, who had a boyfriend at home, nudged me in the ribs and whispered, "If I get a crush on any of the guys here, please shoot me."
I surveyed the room and decided the guys seemed nice but were not, and never would be, my type.
"Ditto," I told her.
By mid-July, Delia broke up with her boyfriend of two years via a letter in order to pursue a guilt-free relationship with one of the male counselors, Jason. A boy who didn't have a car at 23 because he preferred to ride his bike everywhere, spent his winters listening to his mother tell him to get a job and favored fluorescent colors when it came to clothes. A boy she often told me had eyes "bluer than the mountain lakes of Switzerland," which provided, "a clear glimpse into his amazing soul."
I made a mental note that one of the symptoms of summer camp syndrome is a predilection for bad poetry and a plethora of clichés.
Delia broke up with Jason via e-mail less than a week after leaving camp.
This past weekend I discovered that summer camp syndrome isn't exclusive to several days in an isolated situation. One need only be confined in a room with others for about 13 hours before the symptoms appear. After hour 12 sitting in Jefferson Hall, keeping the same limited company, the natives began getting restless. Anything anyone did, no matter how small, potentially could bring the wrath of the room upon them.
Alternatively, do or say something cute or funny after a long period of isolation, be prepared to ward off a throng of ardent admirers. Eighteen hours into the election that became a weekend ordeal, I found myself in the ladies room. Preparing to go back to the same room I'd been in since 8 o'clock that morning for God knows how much longer, another girl asked me with a giggle what I thought of Nathan.
"What?" I asked, not understanding her question. "He is so hot," she continued. "Don't you think he's the funniest guy ever? Do you know if he has a girlfriend?" I apologized for not knowing Nathan's romantic status and splashed cold water on my face before returning to the trying meeting.
Two days later I ran into the girl from the bathroom. "So did you ever find out if Nathan has a girlfriend?" I asked.
"Uh, no. I don't know what I was thinking, he is so not my type," she blushed. I smiled, another case of summer camp syndrome cleared up.
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