Camp Life

Go back to your favorite playground as a child one of these days, and notice how small everything looks. The once massive jungle gym is now merely a couple of plastic tubes and a mini dome. The swing set that used to send you to the moon can now barely hold your beer gut. The field of dreams where you played intense kickball games is now easily cleared with several long strides and the monkey bars seem flimsier than the ancient bar stools at your local dive bar. As a child, I loved the playground. The excitement of the seesaw was comparable to the exhilaration of the Millennium Force and a trip to the sandbox was never complete without making a new friend. There is truly no better team building exercise than building the world's largest sand castle with a perfect stranger. Even in my youth, I was a sucker for a good networking oppurtunity.

Recently I went on an Alternative Spring Break Trip where forty other young adults and myself sacrificed a week of body shots in Panama City Beach to work on community service projects in the Negev desert. Due to the fact that this desert has yet to follow suit with the Mojave's display of resourcefulness, there is very little to do for a group of party animals in their prime, and thus we were quite limited in our afterhours activities. There was however, a massive playground where the village kids entertained themselves during the day, but was completely deserted in the evenings. Every night after getting a bit sauced up at the local grocery store (for lack of an actual bar) we would head to this childhood mecca and play around until the wee hours in the morning, way longer than any of our moms would have ever let us stay. One can laugh at the fact that we had nothing else to do but play around like little kids at summer camp, but there is no argument to the fact that college kids can turn anything into a drinking game, and this was no exception.

Similarly, I went to a local swimming pool yesterday and observed the ridiculousness of what was going on around me. I remember a time when swimming meant diving for rings and jumping off the diving board, there was not a single fear of stepping out in public in a bathing suit, nor any question of what bottom-top combination would make my stomach look more defined. Yet at this pool, the floaties and flippers were replaced with blow-up pong tables, while diving for rings was upgraded to diving to attempt an underwater beer bong. The only plastic pool toys in sight were the red and blue Solo cups filled with foreign liquids and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as the swim time that was held in such high regard as a kid. Really the only aspect of the day that remained characteristic of a summer camp experience was the fact that that the dozens of people in the water seemed to ignore the existence of the indoor bathrooms, a situation made worse due to the mass liquid consumption taking place. Ultimately this means that said pool was no cleaner than the pee-infested water of your local baby pool, regardless of the age difference of respective occupants. Please attempt to hold down your lunch however and continue reading, I should have posted a disclaimer with that thought.

Anyway...

The city of Las Vegas has an amazing new marketing campaign called Camp Vegas. I don't know if you've seen this deliciously graphic and succinct commercial but it truly encompasses the idea that youth is no longer in fact, wasted on the young.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbIF9HZyjkk&feature=player_embedded

Perhaps it is the availability of the new age sorcerer's stone known as Botox and other age-defying technology that keeps adults young, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that while my childhood is gone, my youth never has to be. In nearly every one of my liberal arts classes, there were senior citizens who were part of a community program in conjunction with Ohio State to allow individuals to sit-in on classes without actually taking them for credit. I never really understood this when i was younger, after all, my time was precious and class would sometimes inflict on commitments in my social life. Yet, after awhile, I started realizing that the learning process will never stop, but only get more intricate after I clean all the Natty Light out of my ears and really start paying attention to what's going on around me.

The Camp Vegas commercial does not only display the global desire to drink and subsequently rub down a beautiful stranger, but a thirst for experiencing life to the fullest possible potential. As a child, one can have the imagination to build a complete fantasy world in the comfort of your own mind. As an adult, one has the mental capacity and is able to find the resources to build a reality from this fantastical imagination. Though there is no longer the luxury of comfort, as one can lose a home or a grip on reality with a faulty investment, adults truly have the advantage of freedom in pursuing actions out of their thoughts. Even now, I have friends who have built lucrative businesses from the ground up, ones who are attending medical school to save lives and find cures for devastating diseases, and even others who are writing thoughtful blogs that will motivate and inspire their peers (ahhh got ya!).

So what can we learn from our childhood selves that can help us as we continue this trek into our adult lives? For one thing, I will continue not to take candy from strangers. This rule, in fact, is crucial to college girls as they venture onto numerous beer pong tables and explore various sports team annexes throughout campus. To this day, I make sure that I watch the bartender make my drink and I'm not accepting foreign shots from questionable looking men (only attractive men-kidding mom!). I will also vow to continue helping my fellow peers in sand-castle building and any other other difficult endeavors they may attempt. After all, you never know when you, yourself, will come across some quicksand and will need a hand in turn, or a quick push on the swings to get you back to your regular pumping-pace. Additionally, it is important to take heed to the rules of the pool, while understanding how to bat your eyelashes at the lifeguard who will cut you some slack if you mend them a little bit. Boys- I understand you don't use mascara and thus your lashes do not have the body to pull off this particular maneuver. In this case I would suggest you acquire some adequate sales skills (Ohio State Calling is always hiring -the highest paying job on campus!) or perhaps know how to get a hold of a good lawyer. Finally, childhood should have ultimately taught us that a rough fall may have scraped your knees and made you cry ("yea right Meem, I never cried"), but you always got up, cleaned your bruises, wiped your tears, and continued to mark your territory as the master of the playground. And if that analogy really doesn't do it for you, register yourself to Camp Vegas, grab a cocktail, and if you're not smiling in mere minutes then good riddance Grinch, I don't know what to tell ya.

Meem