I wish I were still in touch with my bunkmates from summer
camp, as I guarantee I would love them more on Facebook than I did in the late 1980’s. Honestly, there are so many people from
my youth that I appreciate and enjoy way more now than I ever did in my past. They are significantly more fascinating,
or at least social media makes them appear so.
Still, my timeline raises a lot of questions for me. Were you as interesting as a tween as
you are now, or have I just lowered my expectations? Was I so self-absorbed back then that I failed to recognize
your uniqueness, or was it still in development? Fabulosity had to exist pre-Facebook, right?
I have to believe that Girls’ Hannah Horvath has always been
uber cool. In fact, I envision her
exiting the womb covered in tattoos, donning not her birthday suit, but an
awesome thrift store find. Hannah summed
that ideal up for me just perfectly in Sunday night’s episode saying, “I’ve
always marched to the beat of my own drummer, ever since I cut my camp t-shirt
into a halter”.
I went to an all-girls summer camp on Sebago Lake in Maine. Sure, my favorite counselor was the butch
lesbian and not the gorgeous brunette twin from the Doublemint Gum commercial,
but I never cut my t-shirt into a halter.
I wish I had. I think.
I have so much respect for Hannah Horvath, for Lena Dunham,
and for any camp-age kid that feels an urge to go against the grain and doesn’t
turn around and take the smoother route.
Real self-awareness is difficult to come by, even in adulthood. But to have it in adolescence, to trust
it, to cultivate it, to keep it from being scared away, that is beauty in it’s
truest form.
I’ve never wanted to be as an adult who I was as a child. In fact, I don’t think any of us
should. Now, don’t get me
wrong. There was nothing wrong
with the mini-me, aside from some extra baby fat and frizzy hair. But I like to imagine being born a
small ball of clay, that with time, molds into a beautiful work of art… hopefully
wearing a halter top.
