A Milestone Letter from Camp

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Are the words true? Can I trust the words? Whose words are they? And is no news good news?

Today, on my son’s fourth day of camp, my husband brought the mail in and announced, “Mail call! A letter from camp!” Last year my son went to camp but did not write to me. Holding the envelope addressed with familiar printing in my hand, I felt a mixture of pride, anticipation and sentimentality. “Oh, my little boy is growing up. I’m going to put this milestone letter in a scrapbook to bring out when he and his wife and children visit me someday.” These thoughts and others predicting the content of the letter flooded my mind in the fifteen seconds it took me to carefully open the envelope. I did not expect to read the following words.

MOM

HELP!

I’m serious.

JACK

I called the camp and waited two agonizing hours for the camp people to locate my son and find out if he was okay. I bathed, got dressed and prepared to drive the two hours to pick him up.

Finally, the camp director called to relieve my fears. Turns out he had transmitted his distress signal on the second day of camp, after his first night of a cold, cold (60 degree) night. (I was excited for him to have “real camp weather,” a relief from the sweltering, sticky 90 degree nights he endured last summer.) “He thought you either didn’t get the letter or figured he was kidding…and was glad you didn’t come pick him up.” WHEW!

So I’ll still put the letter in a scrapbook and hope that next year he writes a more newsy letter. 

Or no letter at all. That’d be fine.

(Fun on the Blob – A thousand words of evidence off the SpringHill website proving that the crisis has passed.)

NOT – See next post – “NOT A LAUGHING MATTER.”