Guest Post: Camp Names

For this blog post, I am switching it up a bit. I have a friend named Lucie who attended a Girl Scout camp in California, and through the course of a few conversations with her on the bus, I have learned a lot about how her camp works. I have asked her to write a post about something that her camp does that I find very intriguing. I would never say our camp should do this, but I think it has implications for us, and we can learn from another’s experience.

Throughout her blog post I want to you to be thinking about two things. One I want you to realize that what she is saying is certainly a very foreign concept for us, but at the same time, if she or anyone else who is not a Yavneh person were to come to our camp, they would find what we do quite strange as well. We have to realize that we exist in a bubble, but there are thousands of other bubbles out there that have their own way of approaching their issues. Second, on a deeper level, even though we don’t change our names, at camp we have the ability to change ourselves. At camp, we take on different identities, doing things we would never do during the year. I have heard countless times that people think they are a totally different person at camp than at school.  I know I am different outside of camp than I am in it, and this fact has taught me more about myself than I could have ever imagined.

Bio:  Lucie is one of Yoni’s fellow mechanical engineering graduate students at Northwestern.  She hails from California and has been involved in different Girl Scout camps in one form or another for most of her life, but the bulk of her camp experiences come from her three summers working at a residential camp in the Tahoe area. This camp’s summer consists of four to six sessions, each one week long, with a new set of campers for each session.  Staffers stay for the whole summer, and CIT’s stay for two, three, or four weeks, depending on their level.

Although I'd never even heard of Camp Yavneh before, I took an immediate interest in Yoni's blog because as a camper in Girl Scouts, I can relate to many of the stories and situations he describes.  So many camp experiences are universal that in reading his stories, I can find my own camp.  The games, the cabin names, the goofy songs and stories, the daily and weekly routines, the dramas, the skits, the things that change or stay the same from one year to the next, and yes, even the lice checks.

            But of course, at the same time all camps are run very differently, and the one aspect that Yoni asked me to expand upon was our convention of camp names.  I don't know how far this practice extends, but in Girl Scouts generally counselors, and occasionally campers, go by camp names.  Your real name you keep secret.  For instance, the name I went by as an adult: Willow.  Not very original in the way of camp names, but it suits me well.  Other names I can think of off the top of my head: Song, Tiger, Tutu, Gecko, Peanut, Bear, Sarge, Maverick, Goonie (shortened from Lagoon), Sasquatch, Skipper, Pinkie, Blondie, Indi and Jonsie (identical twins), Tic-Toc, Cheddar, KitKat, Jester, Dobbie, Gollum, Freckles, Doubledork...  I could keep going and going because for me each of these names holds the same emotional punch as for any person naming their camp friends.

            These names are in no way official, so people can and occasionally do change them from one year to the next.  But people generally stay with what their friends know them as.  Experienced staffers will show up to staff training with their names already in place, while the new ones spend the next few days choosing their own camp names.  Returning staff will tell them to pick their favorite candy bar, cartoon character, animal, or anything.  Sometimes names are chosen very quickly: I can remember one afternoon break a returning staffer reclining on a cot and doling out new staff names like candy.  "Got any Disney characters you like?" she'd ask, and within fifteen minutes, Abu, Chip, and Starfish were named.  Other staff members deliberate for longer, sometimes switching a day or two into a different camp name.  One staff member took the full two weeks of training to choose a camp name, and I was so used to her real one I kept accidentally using it in front of the campers.  Fortunately, though, her real name, Kat, short for Katharine, gave me some leeway.

            "Go give that to Kat." I instructed one camper.

            Her brow wrinkled.  "Who's Cat?"

            "Oh!"  My brain did a double take.  "I forgot.  Cat's not here.  Go give that to Twinkle."

            Because real names are such a secret, it's the goal of all campers to find them out.  Towards the end of the week, some campers will come straight up and ask us to tell them (often the answer is "Sorry, but no," or just "Guess,") but others will go to impressive and, yes, frightening lengths to uncover them.  Once an older camper approached me asking me for more staff names, and she showed me her notebook with all the staff and CITs listed in one column and most of the real names filled out in the next column.  She must have done some serious sleuthing because she even had the anomalous spelling of my name right, and I never give out my real name, a firm personal rule of mine.

            This conviction is rooted in my junior high and high school days as a PA, program aide, at summer day camp.  There it was the trend among PA's to give out fake real names if the campers pressed too much.  So I tried it once and gave one girl my middle name, Anne.  I immediately felt guilty, not only because I hate lying, but also I had the feeling that she'd remember it for a long time.

            She proved me right when I ran into her in the streets a year or two later.  As I passed her by she called out to me in a sing-song voice, "I know your real name!"  She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "Anne!"  Too embarrassed to correct her, I smiled and nodded and passed on.  She probably still remembers that fake name, and I still feel bad.  So now if any camper asks, I just tell them I don't give out my real name.  I don't want to lie about it, and, as proven by the girl with the spiral notebook, any leak of the truth can travel far and fast.

            I suppose a lot of you reading this now are wondering, why this secrecy?  Why this separation?  From reading Yoni’s blog, it seems you all keep a strong connection between campers and counselors even well outside of camp.  The first reason I thought of was tradition.  Every Girl Scout camp I’ve been to has had these camp names, which includes the fun of choosing silly names and allows people to express a bit of their personality through their names.  However, then I remembered the older and much less amusing reason.  Because Girl Scouts is such a large and high profile organization, keeping our real names secret can offer some needed protection.  The smallest offense done by anyone can easily be blown out of proportion by the media or the population at large.  If the only name a disgruntled parent or camper can offer is a fake one, it could save us a lot of trouble.

            Despite their disconcerting origins, camp names are an endearing fixture of camp life.  Even staffers amongst themselves go by camp names, even outside of camp.  Look at my phone's contact list, and you’ll find names like, “Dapples” and “Stooge.”  There's this moment that happens at the start of every summer when you meet a new staff member.  If they're new to camp names, there'll be a beat when they introduce themselves as they wonder, "What name do I give?"  Returning staff will give you their camp name right off the bat because they know it's the only one that matters.  We hardly know each other's real names.  That is, until we friend each other on facebook once the summer ends.  But before that, unless someone started on their real name during staff training, we won't know anyone's real names until some afternoon on a lazy break in the staffhouse when the conversation turns to names.  The question, "What's your real name?" will be passed around, and everyone will comment, "Wow, you don't look like a Sally," or, "Yeah, I can really see you as a Becky."

            For me, though, camp names complete the transformation from normal life to camp life.  My "real" life is so different from my camp life that I do play the part of a different person, and the camp name helps solidify that.  Deep into the summer, I'll respond less readily to my real name and, like all names, start responding to words and phrases that sound like my camp name ("pillow" or sometimes even "hello" for Willow).  Willow truly is my alter ego, and when I'm in camp, my alter ego becomes Lucie.  As Willow, I can sing and dance almost anything in front of the entire camp, things I could never do as Lucie.  Getting called Willow for that first time in June is just another reminder of camp's myriad of other worldly possibilities.