I took my dog with me to camp one summer. I had a special dispensation on this—dogs were not allowed at camp generally, but Phoebe was a Seeing Eye puppy and my family was raising her for the first year of her life, charged with the task of socializing her and teaching her basic manners. When her year with us ended, she would be reclaimed buy the Seeing Eye, formally trained, and eventually partnered for life with a visually impaired person.

But none of that would happen for a long time—for now she was ours, which was to say mine. I spent my summers working as a riding instructor at an overnight camp, living in tents and surrounded by children, so taking Phoebe along with me seemed like a perfect way to expose her to strange and interesting new environments.

I obtained permission from the camp administrator and off we went. From the first day of the summer onward, Phoebe was at my side almost everywhere. She quickly learned how to behave around horses and even more quickly, she learned how to behave around kitchen workers who responded by producing bacon on cue, as if by magic.

That summer I found myself the object of unprecedented popularity among the children. Though I had to concede that this was sparked by more than just my charming personality. Sometimes in the midst of a moment of glory, as I was basking in my fame, watching crowds gather to await my arrival, it would occur to me that many of these beaming children didn’t know my name—I could hand off Phoebe’s leash to another counselor and my adoring fans would not notice the change. “Look!” they would say when I appeared, “It’s….Phoebe’s owner!”

She was a Labrador, a breed known for friendliness and patience with children. But Phoebe was a winner even for a lab. Which worked out well for everyone—for her, for me, and also for a population of children who had much to gain from exposure to a dog like her. About half of the children at this camp were here as part of a program targeting girls from troubled backgrounds, and these girls each carried a host of burdens laid on them by an impoverished inner-city Philadelphia childhood. Some of them were failing out of school, some had broken homes or no homes, and some had sad life stories too complicated to tell, much less understand, within the limits of a few weeks of summer camp.

As counselors, of course, our role with these girls fell somewhere between temporary older sisters and utterly untrained, unlicensed professional therapists. To these children we were cast in the light of guardians, friends, authority figures, listeners, teachers, and social workers, though we had special skills and training in exactly none of these areas. This is the nature of camp counseling—as it is now and always should be. There are some places in the world where one would like to find structure and order in perfect coherence with one’s expectations of life in a civilized world, but one does not find these things. Instead, one finds life not as it should be but as it actually is. One finds teenagers from the suburbs fielding the grief and confusion of children who need far more than these teenagers can offer, and one finds a recognition on both sides of this conversation that what we need is not always what we get.

One of my units that summer included a girl who had been in and out of trouble more than once. She had known several foster homes, and she had been involved in more knife fights in real life than I had seen in movies. She was a surly menace—this was her carefully cultivated persona and her indispensable armor. She made a point of causing problems everywhere she went among campers and counselors alike. And she also made it clear very quickly that she would do anything, anything at all—even behave and sit still and try not to stab anyone—if it meant a reward of even five minutes of time with Phoebe.

As a riding instructor my time was divided between my unit of girls and the stable. While my co-counselors spent most of the day with our unit, I was around only during the early mornings and evenings. But as a result of Alexandra’s behavior problems I was often summoned back to the unit at random hours during the day—or rather Phoebe was.

In the middle of a riding lesson, a young messenger would appear at the stable with instructions for me.

“We need Phoebe,” the child would tell me as I walked over to meet her at the fence. “It’s Alexandra.”
“I’m in the middle of a lesson,” I would say.
“She needs Phoebe. Binky promised her. Binky promised her that we could play with—I mean, that Alexandra could play with Phoebe for five minutes. If she behaved.”

I responded to these calls every single time they occurred. And as I did so, I noticed a pattern developing. Alexandra was a clever manipulator. When she wanted to, she went from surly menace to adorable dealmaker.

What becomes of children like this when they get what they want? I’m sure there are a million studies that can answer this. And I’m sure the answers are not good. And yet as far as my involvement in her life was concerned, Alexandra was destined to become an addition to these statistics. In my defense: This was not juvenile hall. This was not military school. This was camp.
If she needed tough love, she came to the wrong place.

“Phoebe is the only one who understands me,” Alexandra would explain to me, burying her face in Pheobe’s fur. “She’s the only real friend I’ve ever had….Besides you, of course.”
“Is she?”
“She helps me. She helps me have empty…emp…empathy. She helps me relate.”

It occurred to me in the midst of these touching scenes that Alexandra had seen all the same movies and after-school specials about underprivileged children that I had. There was nothing I knew about the culture, literature and lingo of the “system” that she didn’t know.

“What can I say?” She told me woefully. “I’m disadvantaged.”

So sue me. I was a willing mark. I was an easy touch. I was a bad therapist. Why? Because I wasn’t a therapist. I was a camp counselor with a dog.

I like to think that Phoebe, wherever she is now, gained experience that summer that helped her navigate a noisy unpredictable world later for a person who couldn’t see that world and depended on her for guidance.

And I like to think that my young friend, wherever she is now, looks back on that summer as one in which my dog helped her settle down just long enough to do something new and different that she may not have otherwise had a chance to do in this life– To swim in a lake, ride a horse, learn to catch a fish and tell a red oak apart from a pin oak.

It doesn’t matter if she ever turned these skills later to the purposes of a good income, a graduate degree, a big house, or even a respectable life; For one brief summer she bought my trust, which was cheap, and she used it to spend a few weeks acting like a child before her childhood ended for good.

My Seeing Eye dog and I may have steered her off track by indulging her all the time and choosing her momentary happiness over…whatever the correct course of action might have been. But I hope we didn’t.

And I also hope– though this may be unrealistic– that she remembers my name, not just Phoebe’s.

- Erin Sweeney

The year I was ready to graduate (if that’s the proper word) from counselor-in-training to counselor-for-real, I was asked to choose my official camp name within the first twenty-four hours of orientation week. And by asked I mean told, and by twenty four hours I mean within that day’s session of the orientation process.

“You all need names,” said the administrator and her staff. “And soon, so the names will stick. If you don’t have one by the end of the day, we will choose one for you. You don’t want that.”

At our camp, every official staff member had a camp name. The logic behind the camp name concept is sound. Camp can (and should) be a warm and intimate environment, but the close proximity between campers and counselors can sometime lead to conflict. Replacing real names with pseudonyms like “Skippy” and “Bobo” can have the counterintuitive effect of establishing distance and respect. A great camp runs on a perfect blend of fun and boundaries.

I had spent the last several summers of my life at this camp, and many of the reoccurring faces here had names that had become so inseparable from their natures that it was a shock, even at the age of fifteen or so, to be reminded that Skeeter was known elsewhere as Sandra Johnson, or that somewhere out there in another world, Morty and Toostie and Scarfo and T-Bone went by strange names that didn’t fit them at all, names like Steve and Rosemary.

A good camp name will ideally last for years. And just like one of those stick-on name tags, if you press it on and then pull it off and change it a few times, the adhesive weakens and with it goes the whole concept. Like any name, what good is a camp name if nobody can remember it? And nobody can remember it if it keeps changing. The solution: Pick a good one, keep it, and do it early.

With so much at stake, which name would I take as my own? I finally decided on “Blazer”. I was a riding instructor and horses were my area of expertise, so Blazer seemed appropriate. But as soon as I announced my new name with conviction, one of the older counselors threw herself across the table at which I was sitting in the orientation room (also known as the dining hall) and tackled me, literally. (We behave differently at camp than we do in the civilized world. Camp is a different place. Better. But different. I was not successful in fighting her off.)
“You can’t have Blazer!”
“Why not?” I said, from the floor.
“Blazer is my car’s name.”
“Is your car a Blazer?”
“No.”
“Then how about…Tigress?”
“No Tigress,” said someone else. “It’s taken.”
“I thought you were The Shadow.”
“People keep just calling me “Shadow”. It’s not the same.”
“So now you want to be Tigress?”
“I wrote it on my nametag already, see?”

I had a few other choices left on my list, none of which seemed like a perfect fit. Neither did “Misty” (Of Chincotique fame), or “Secretariat.”

Some were too random, some had too many syllables, and some suggested adult films, truck drivers or both.

Time was running out. If I didn’t have a name soon I’d be stuck with something like “Campo”, or another name apparently pulled from the camp name lost-and-found bin, like the old sweatpants they make you wear at school when you’re caught breaking the dress code.

Eventually I was the only counselor still nameless. All my friends were helping me now. Suggestions came from every corner of the room. Sparrow! Loudy! Lightning! Treefrog! Names for me were proposed and vetoed one after another.

All around me were the faces of my formative years—my family away from home, my girls, my lifelong friends who I didn’t see for nine months of the year and couldn’t get away from during the other three. Their faces come back to me vividly now, and so do their names– Tango. Binky. Mongoose. Wednesday. Moo-moo. Each name a masterpiece, so brilliant and so stupid. All great camp names are a little bit of both.
Also: all great camp names have a back story, usually one that cannot—nor ever should– be explained. This was to hold true in my case.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” said Bubbles, “I have one for you!”
“What?”
“It’s too perfect! I can’t even say it!”

She had everyone’s attention now, which never took her long to get when she wanted it.
She announced my name.
Silence fell over the room for one brief moment.
And then they all erupted. They laughed. They shouted. They voiced their approval. And from that point forward, my name was my name.

Even if I hadn’t wanted it, it still would have been mine. And it would have stayed mine for the next three years. And even after I went off to college and then graduated and then started working my professional way up the ladder in a professional line of business, wearing suits to work every day (very professional), these people would still call me by this name. In letters first, by email later, over the phone, and on the rare but wonderful occasions we still managed to meet up in the world, they would still know me by this name and find it strange to call me by the name my parents had given me.

I was lucky. I didn’t hate it. Not quite, anyway.

In time I found that I actually liked it. Then I loved it. Then finally, I couldn’t imagine myself as anyone else.

Among the things I’ve learned in this life: A nickname, if it’s a good one, is a thing of value. A good camp name is worth more than gold.

- Erin Sweeney

The first reason: Leadership

Did you know that eight out of every ten CEOs, surgeons, and Nobel prize winners spent at least one summer of their young lives as camp counselors?

Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. I made it up. But if you’ve ever spent a summer as a camp counselor, then you don’t need me to cite no stinking sources on the not-hard-to-believe (obvious, really) scientific link between camp experience and leadership skills. Never will you have a job with such high stakes—dozens of parents are trusting you, after all, with their most precious possessions—at an age when you are still so blessed with incredible youth and energy. Most likely, you will hold several jobs over several years before you again encounter this level of responsibility. And never again will spending time with children be this much fun! At least not until you have our own.

The second reason to be a camp counselor: Approval!

Look at those kids. They love you. And you didn’t even have to do anything! Just that one thing, you know the thing, where it looks like you’re turning your face inside out. And that other thing, that dance move where it looks like you’re walking forwards but you’re actually moving backwards. Oh, and the story you tell them, that one story you tell at night that terrifies them and cracks them up. Oh, and the fact that you are firm but fair when it comes to distributing chores. And the way you always stop fights and get everyone to be friends again. And the way you put an end to the game right when everybody is ready to run out of breath and die because they’re having so much fun (a trick you learned!) so the game has no chance to peak and get boring and later it becomes the game that everybody always wants to play—will do anything to play for even ten minutes, even clean the bathrooms!—the most.

Oh…and also you know everything, have been through everything, understand everything, can talk about anything, and can teach anything, including how to build a fire, walk on your hands, make a water wheel with sticks and paper, and hit one homerun after another with a child-size bat and a baseball that is actually a tennis ball that really belongs to a dog.

So I guess you have done a few things to earn that love after all. Still. It’s nice to be loved.

The third reason: Money!

Okay, that’s not a reason. I don’t know why I even said that. If you’re lucky you’ll make enough money over the course of three months to buy a few new tires for your car. Okay, one new tire for your car. Okay maybe you’ll be able to get your car washed. Once. I’m sorry to rub it in. I shouldn’t have even brought that up.

(Maybe you should think about saving that money for college and just wash the car yourself with a hose. Just a thought.)

The fourth reason: Love!

Is your camp a boy’s camp with only boy counselors? Is it a girl’s camp with only girl counselors? Is it…dare I ask…a camp with both boys and girls at the same time? And counselors of both genders growing and learning and loving and laughing in a beautiful rustic setting with woods and nature all around? Why are you still sitting here reading this?

And finally: The Future.

Lean in here and I’ll tell you a secret. I know where the future is headed and I can tell you. I’ll whisper it. The future… is in camp counseling.

Okay, that’s not at all true, not exactly. The future is not in camp counseling, especially not your future and not over the long term. You may someday run a camp or direct a camp or work at a camp in some other capacity, but counseling—the noble art and science of singing and hiking and playing and sleeping and eating with twenty children who have been lifted away from their homes and families and transplanted into the woods, the art of keeping them safe, keeping them entertained, and teaching them lessons about life that they will never forget— This is a time honored and rewarding profession (yes, I said profession) that we reserve for those under a certain magic age. This job is for the young alone. We older people step away from this beautiful and challenging work for some reason, and we let you have it. Why this happens in our culture I will never really know. But it does. So take advantage of it.

Be a camp counselor, and do it now. The magic age is coming–Nothing can hold it back. And after it arrives you will have many opportunities (yes, I said many) to be an intern or whatever, filing papers in some office. And you will have plenty of opportunities to wait on tables and work behind counters at stores. Those things will always be there. But camp will not always be there. And someday soon, sooner than you realize, it will truly find its way out of your reach. Just like childhood. See how that works?

Do it while you can, while you want to, while you have that spark, while you can still swing that tiny bat, and while those ridiculous jokes still make you laugh.

And most important: Do it because we trust you to do it well. For a little while longer yet, we trust you.

- Erin Sweeney