Camp Cullen has my son

In the past forty-eight hours I have developed a new Internet addiction. This isn't a normal Internet addiction like posting photos of cats with grammatically incorrect captions or Myspace or porn. This Internet addiction will be short lived yet for the rest of this week I imagine that it will populate my history like no other site I visit. My Internet addiction is to Camp Cullen's online photo gallery page as, for the first time in his life, Colin is away from home at summer camp.

Melissa and I drove Colin up to camp on Sunday. I can't say the trip was easy and uneventful as it was the opposite of that. We had to drop off Melissa's old bed with our friend Brandi, who needed a bed, and return my parent's Tahoe, which we'd borrowed for the move all before we got on the road to Camp Cullen. On top of that, my car's AC was on it's last legs and while it ran fine at sixty miles per hour, it turned into a heater in any serious traffic.

Still, we pressed on and tried to keep the needle over the sixty mark. As we approached Huntsville I did a mental checklist to make sure we were not forgetting anything and I realized that Colin's sleeping bag wasn't packed. A quick call to Chelsea confirmed this and left us with very few options on how to replace it. Melissa and I had to stop at Wal-Mart for a sleeping bag. It was my first trip to a Wal-Mart in six or so years and two for Melissa. We both refuse to shop there however when Colin needs a sleeping bag the choice between Wal-Mart and driving thirty miles back to Conroe is pretty easy. Twenty bucks later, we were back on the way.

Colin was nervous and a bit apprehensive about going to camp, but I knew he'd love it. Colin is attending the same summer camp I went to twenty-nine years ago when I was his age. He's in the same cabin I was in the first year and he will be walking the same trails and swimming in the same pool and canoing the same cove of water I did. Camp Cullen had a huge impact on my life and as I drove my son there I felt the same level of excitement that I used to feel as a child going there.

From the summer of 1979 until sometime in the spring of 1990 I found any way I could to get to Camp Cullen. I was a camper there for six years and spent two weeks every summer there. When I was too old to be a camper I was a CIT. When I was too old to be a CIT I was a volunteer and from there I moved up to a paid member of the staff. While I was in college I would drive over to Cullen on the weekends to lead trail rides or work on the ropes course. I looked at my college options with the idea of working at a camp like Cullen as a profession.

Camp Cullen was a magical place for me. It was a place where I felt loved and found it easy to make friends. The camp was filled with counselors who showed us how to be good people, friendly, happy, loving , supportive and overall, decent. I learned how to tie knots, canoe, waster ski, ride horses, shoot arrows and guns and sail a sailing boat. My head was filled with the skits, games and songs that make up the somewhat crazy world of summer camp and to this day I can still recall most of them. As a CIT I can remember my first summer romance at Camp Cullen (she had braces and it didn't last long). I learned how to be a good person at Camp Cullen and for that I am very thankful. My mind is filled with memories of the place and for the most part, they are all good.

Sure there are bad memories mixed in with the good, but looking back on it I learned lessons from the bad memories. When I had a counselor who I didn't like I learned that it was better to make the best of the time I wasn't around him rather than focusing on ways to get back at him. I learned that bragging on yourself was the fastest way to lose respect from your peers. When I was a volunteer I was there for a scholarship week and I learned a lot about what it is to be poor.

We dropped Colin off at Camp at three-thirty. The check in process was so fast that I was disappointed. We checked Colin's name off two checklists, gave a counselor his footlocker and showed him to the table for his cabin. When we left Colin looked a little overwhelmed with the scene. The dining hall was filled with kids and at the front of the room were six counselors leading the group in a crazy camp song. I know within a few days Colin will get used to that; the real trick is not missing it for the other fifty or so weeks of the year.

I wanted to spend more time there. I wanted to show Melissa this place that still has a hold on me. The check-in process was so smooth that within fifteen minutes of arriving we were back in the car and driving off for home. As we walked to the car I felt my eyes water up; not because I was sad that Colin was leaving, as a divorced parent I'm used to that. My eyes watered because I didn't want to leave. I wanted to figure out a way to spend one more summer week of my life at Camp Cullen. I wanted to be a camper again just to experience all those things that I so loved as a child.

I am sure that Colin will love his week at camp. I have no doubt in my mind. The photos on the camp website may not always show him smiling, but it's camp; how can it not be the most awesome week of his summer? I hope Colin learns about himself while he is there. At eight he is more and more his own person with his own struggles and strengths. The lessons he can learn being away from family are so important to him being a good person when he is older. If he comes back a different person then I am sure that the changes will be good for him.

Most of all I hope that Camp Cullen becomes as important a place for him as it did for me all those years ago. I hope that he still sings silly camp songs thirty years later when he is approaching forty and is able to smile at memories of a place on Lake Livingston that for a week or two each summer was the best place in the world.