Crip Camp Reminded Me How Camp Changed My Life as a Disabled Teenager

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How old were you when you first felt you truly belonged somewhere?

Maybe this is something you've intrinsically felt.  Maybe you only noticed it when you no longer fit in, due to circumstances beyond your control.

I was thirteen...and it was my first time at summer camp.

***

Watching the Netflix documentary Crip Camp, brought the memories flooding back.  That brief time in my teen years where I finally felt like I fit in somewhere.

When I first arrived, though, I wasn't so sure I belonged there at all.  All of the campers seemed more severely disabled than me.  Add to this, that my sister was not attending camp with me, and I just didn't feel ready.

I was more focused on the counselors, who were all visibly nondisabled.  All older.  Some were local.  Some were from other places: Holland, Australia, New Zealand, Russia.  I wanted all of the counselors to like me.  And I wanted to be just like them when I grew up.

Having never been around this many disabled kids before, I didn't feel I fit in with them and naturally gravitated more toward the counselors, wanting to impress them.

I remember looking around early on and feeling like I would never fit in here.  This would never work.  I'd never belong.

But...I wasn't lonely for long.

***

I made friends with a girl slightly younger than me.  She was sure of herself and engaging.  And we quickly set out to spend every moment together.

We ate meals together.  I was stunned to see so many campers who needed all different types of assistance.  I was young and grew up steeped in ableism from every direction.  So, my primary feeling was relief.  I felt lucky that my CP was not more severe.  That I didn't need more help.

Every cabin made a cabin cheer and we sang the cabin cheer every day at lunch.  Our cabin cheer compared our cabin too a beehive.  (It's no surprise we didn't win.)  Every day had a new theme.  I wasn't fond of dinner-for-breakfast, where we all had barbecue chicken sandwiches...

My new best friend and I were joined at the hip.  We went everywhere together, doing the same activities (enjoying early internet access and the library, where we found the book Old Turtle, and read it together.  We cracked up whenever "Old Turtle smiled," and I loved that my BFF had a knack for smiling just like Old Turtle...

[The last day of my second summer.  I was 14 years old, arm in arm with my best friend.]

She also had a knack for quoting long sections of letters I received from family members - including their errors - we particularly loved it when she read my great grandma's letter, which memorably opened, "Well, hell!" instead of, "Well, hello!"  She explained words I'd never heard before (like "venting") and taught me all the words to Garth Brooks's The River.

We did activities like camping outdoors in a tent, horseback riding and swimming.  But I enjoyed nothing more than just spending time with my friend.

Over the years, our circle widened.  My best friend invited her best friend, who we nicknamed the town crier because she always knew the time and announced it.  And over time, we welcomed a fourth girl, who was both gorgeous and sweet.  She was endlessly patient as we tried to help with the letter she dictated.

We asked questions to get the ball rolling: "Do you have pets?"

"Patches.  She's a cat."

So, one of us included the phrase: How is Patches?

We were gently corrected: "She died."

Her letter then read: How is Patches, the dead cat?

We loved each other.  We helped each other.  When one of our chairs broke down, we enlisted each other's help and direction to pound on it with a hairbrush.  When one of our fab four ended up with her legs hanging precariously out of bed in the middle of the night, and no counselor could hear her naturally soft voice, I got up and helped her back to bed and safety.

On the last night, my last year at camp, I stayed up very late talking to my best friend.  We talked for hours.  Me, sitting on her bed in the dark.  We didn't want the week to end, but knew it would.

I didn't know it would be my final year there.  That three weeks of belonging (from ages 13 to 15 years old) was all I would ever find, until adulthood.

My camp friends and I loved each other...and kept in touch for years, by letter.

***

The other reason camp was memorable for me?  

The counselors.  

I loved them so much.  

When I think of them, the word access comes to me simultaneously.  The cabins floors were bare, aisles wide enough for wheelchairs.  The counselors slept at least four to a cabin in a curtained off section in the center. So they were always available for the inevitable call of, "Counselor!" that came in the middle of the night.

But the women themselves made such an impression on me.  Because they took time.  They wanted to get to know us.  They encouraged my burgeoning writing talent and read my half-started stories in notebooks I had lugged from home.

When we needed something, they helped us cheerfully, celebrating milestones of the campers, and never making us feel ashamed for things we could not help.  We had dances as a camp and private dance parties, where one counselor did The Worm at our request and even tasted one campers snack: cheese balls, which the counselor decided were "foul-tasting."  But even this was lighthearted.  They enjoyed us, and we felt enjoyed.

Camp was one of the first places in my life where I did not feel like a burden to adults around me.  Where I felt seen, and valued and validated for all of who I was.  I didn't have to hide any part of myself.

Throughout my summers there, I knew campers regularly came up against bouts of homesickness.  At least once, each of my weeks at camp, someone would be crying, missing their parents.  Wanting to go home.

Our counselors were gentle forces in our lives.  I still recall hearing a cabinmate in tears and then, hearing one of our counselors softly singing TLC's Creep as a comfort.  As a teenager, I only heard a song about loneliness being lovingly sung to a camper who was clearly feeling sad.

***

And then there was the night a counselor caught me in silent tears on my bed.  I stared out the window of the cabin.  My friends were out somewhere.  I was alone and my guard was down.

I was thinking of home, but not for the reasons people thought.

A counselor noticed.  She asked if I missed home.  I insisted I didn't.  (And I didn't.)  But I could not stop my tears.

This counselor memorably joined me on the bed, staring longingly out the window, her chin in her hand and mused:

"You're thinking...about a boy..."

I cracked up at the absurdity.

I was unused to people noticing my upset.  Tending to my sadness.  Even trying to talk to me about it.  And while it didn't take away my worries, it did break the tension momentarily.  She got me involved in something - or found my friends - I don't remember which.

But I felt better.

At camp, I always felt better.

Because at camp, I always fit.

***

Watching Crip Camp brought back that feeling for me.

It gave the feeling words.

Because now I know...that finding camp as a disabled teenager felt like finding my family for the very first time.  Getting to enjoy them and spend time with them for a week.  And then being forced back to facing the world alone.

It was the very first time I had people.

The very first time I belonged.

***

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