Parents have embraced the Jewish summer camp experience, sending their kids away, enjoying the summer spent without their children. Some parents have even added a new prayer to their Shabbat liturgy, 'B"H they're gone.'
Jewish Summer Camp is a joy for the parents, and there are things that no parent should have to hear when liberated from a child. Stuff that intrudes on a parent’s enjoyment of not having their child around. Stuff that might remind them they brought that little one into the world, when the weather is nice outside. Even worse, stuff that might suggest the child wants to come home.
Here are things that you parents do not want to hear from your child at Jewish Summer Camp:
 
My Counselor is Going to be a Junior in High School
To get rid of your kid for the summer you were fine with this. Yet, hearing your child's safety is in the hands of another child has you bothered for a second. You're not bringing your kid home. But that moment of thought and doubt intrudes on your relaxation. Not fair. Forcing you to think of the well being of your kid. Chutzpah.
A high schooler is watching over your kid for the summer, keeping them safe. You didn’t trust them to babysit your kid when you went to the movies three months ago, because the teenager failed Home-Ec. Now, the fifteen-year-old is taking your youngest on overnights in the middle of the woods. To ensure the safety of your eight-year-old going up against bears, the counselor set up a buddy system, where your eight-year-old is watched over by another eight-year-old.
It's just a Chutzpah. Your little one shouldn't be killing your time away from them with thoughts of their safety.
 
I want to Come Home
That is the last thing you want to hear. That can kill some decent summer plans. Do anything you can to not hear this. Ghost your child if you have to. It may leave some scars, but at least you'll be able to enjoy your summer.
You sent them to camp to get rid of them for the summer. You were willing to spend $12,000 on each child to make sure they would not come home. You've just thrown out every art project they came home with last year. The Chanukah Menorah with the nuts on a slab of wood is finally in the trash. You even left a fifteen-year-old in charge of them, and pretended like you didn’t notice. Whatever they need, give it to them. If that means another bunk in another camp, do it.

I am Homesick
It's hard to care for your child and then to have to respond to their sickness by telling them, ‘Your mom and dad are sick of having you at home. They are feeling ill having to see you. The thought of you at the house depresses them.’

The Kids are Mean
When children are not around adults, they turn into creatures of hate with no moral sense. Wedgies become a daily activity, and they're considered fun. Encourage your child to deal with the abuse and to enjoy the wedgies, even if there's a good chance they'll come home injured.

I am at the Infirmary
You had no idea that the camp you sent your child to is an army barracks in the middle of a Catskill war zone.
Now you might have to visit. And that is your child killing your good times with thoughts of them.
You're thinking you should visit. Don't. You're thinking that malaria might be a reason to bring your child home. Don't. Your friends are coming over for a game of Scrabble later. There's a camp nurse. An infirmary. They have to learn to survive out there with upper middle class Jewish New Yorkers.

I Don’t Like Bunk Beds
They will never survive in camp or a youth hostel. They are going to be expensive to raise.

I Miss You
Worst thing to hear. No parent wants to hear this. This is your child trying to scare you. A parent only wants to hear that if it's not genuine. You want to hear, 'I love you.' That means the child is OK and doesn't want to see you.
'I miss you.' Why would your child do this to you? If the child is over thirty and living overseas, this is a fine statement. As there is no way the child will visit. At that point, they know you're not paying for them to come back home.
Do whatever you can to avoid love in your home, and you will not have to deal with this issue.

I Want a Package
Can’t get away with a month of no shopping for the kid. Now you've got to pick up Pringles, Twizzlers and hockey gear. You already spent $12,000 on camp. The least they can do is provide your child with sports equipment and some sweets. But you send it. Whatever they need, you send it, due to fear of the child coming home.
To offset the fear of packages have gotten bigger and more intricate. Now these entitled children need comfort. You have to go to the supermarket and Bed Bath & Beyond. You're sending packages with couches and air-conditioning units, and anything else that will ensure that your child does not want to come home. I've seen kids getting packages with golf carts. Golf carts with notes that say, 'Your parents love you. Please stay in camp for the second session too.'
If you want any love from your child, and to rid yourself of the threat of our child visiting home, regular Pringles will not do; you got to make sure the Pringles are the sour cream n’ onion type with a memory foam mattress.

I Miss Your Cooking
Now you have to ship an overnight package with a hotplate. Otherwise, they might want to come home.
Feels good when you hear it. Just make sure you send that package. Otherwise, they're coming home and you will have to cook spaghetti for the rest of the summer. 

Goal is to keep them there, at camp. Away from you and uncomfortable.
Next time we will discuss more stuff you don't want to hear after spending $12,000, such as ‘I’m bringing home some arts-n-crafts,’ 'I started collecting salamanders,' and 'you have to tip my counselor.'

Let's take a stroll down memory lane to the JNF Tzedakah box, children being allowed to choose what they eat, and other ways of extorting money from your children like My First Lotto, with the Kibbitzer's pictures of laughter from last month. We want to thank David Kilimnick for sharing his anger about giving Tzedakah to Israel, and how he feels about putting roof scraps on a grave of holy rabbi. The stone shortage is a real thing.

Jewish summer camp is one of the cornerstones of the Jewish experience. Summer camp helped form me into the Jew I am today, and taught me that we Jews don’t play regular sports. We played sports, but they were different. I know this, because I was watching the summer Olympics, and I didn't see anybody competing in bottle cap hockey or paper football. 
Here are a few of the special sports that I remember playing as a youth in summer camp, Jewish day school and shul:

Newcomb
The most serious game we played at Jewish summer camp. It's similar to volleyball, but you can catch the ball. It's like competitive toss. Some people took the game to the next level by throwing the ball over the net and not looking at the exact spot they were tossing it. That's what the real athletes do.
Some children wanted to play volleyball, but that caused a big raucous. It was too complicated. And it was too dangerous. Too many children were getting hurt by the ball that was being hit to their side. When they noticed how bad the kids were at catching the volleyball, they made a sport of it.
At camp, they made sure that every young Jewish child felt like an athlete. And for that, I thank them for helping me realize how important it was to focus on my studies.

Bottle Cap Hockey
The number one game played during free hour. I was quite a competitor. Free hour was quiet time, so we had to stay near the bunk and play sports that wouldn’t make noise, until we got excited. Excitement is too loud for rest hour. Excitement is hitting a bottle cap the length of the table all the way to the other guy’s hand. That is a reason to cheer. When it came to hitting a bottle cap between the opponent’s pinky and pointer finger, there were not many as agile as I. I don't mean to show off, but I was good.

Paper Football
Another sport that I played with a mastery and finesse that could only be displayed by one who did not run track. We would fold a paper towel into a triangle, and then take part in the art of causing that paper towel to land on the end of the table.  The greatest reward I've ever experienced. Other than skimming the top layer of the baked mac and cheese.
After landing the paper football on the end of the table, we'd flick it through a field goal made out of pointer fingers, and then lose the paper. Without pointer fingers, we would have been at a loss for free hour sports. 
We played paper football when drought hit the camp, and bottles were hard to come by. I was an avid paper football player the whole year round, as I also played it every Shabbat of my childhood, in shul. I had to do something in shul. My dad was making me go anyways. So, I figured I would use my time in synagogue for something productive.
The young Jewish athletes we were, we did play tackle paper football once. That turned into a fight. We forgot about the game and started a brawl. If you cannot find the paper football, tackling a friend in the middle of services is frowned upon. As I learned later on, the only hostile sentiments allowed in shul are those for the rabbi.

Color War
Cheering is the sport. Cheering and prejudice against other colors is the competition. There's nothing like this in sports, where excitement is the activity. Three days of excitement and hatred of your fellow bunkmate. 
Running is also a form of excitement. Which is why we double the excitement with races during color war. This makes for the climax of color war, where the eight-year-olds run and have no idea what to do with the baton. The uncoordinated running, as a race, is exciting. You add cheers and hatred of your fellow Jew, and it's the climax of all Jewish summer sports events.

Floor Hockey
This is the most serious of Jewish games, as we weren't coordinated enough to play hockey on ice. We played as if we were going to be professional floor hockey players. The benefit of playing on the floor is that when the fight breaks out, you are able to push off your feet, allowing for a more powerful punch.
We played hockey with a ball. A puck would have changed the makeup of the sport. That was how we figured out what sports we could play. We were allowed to play any sport, but we were not allowed to use the allotted equipment for the sport. We played hockey without a puck. We used a ball or bottle caps. We played football with a paper towel. We played basketball with a spoon wedged into wood.
Volleyball and soccer (football in every other country outside of America) were the only games that we played with the correct gear. However, it was newcomb and crab soccer. Soccer was allowed, but only while leaning back, on our palms, on all fours, moving on the ground like a crab. This was to remind us that we had no chance of competing professionally. And to remind us that we look like fools when we exercise. 
To quote Richard: Judaism has lots of rules. When it comes to sports, we don’t like following them.
To this day, floor hockey is the number one sport played in the New York Yeshiva league, keeping hockey on the parquet.
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Machanayim- Dodgeball
The idea behind this game was to try your hardest to hurt other children. The sport is played with the hardest flexible ball known to man, squeezable enough so that when it hits you the rubber is able to stick to your face for an extra second. This allows for the enhanced burning sensation of skin being removed from your skull. Rules: You get hit, you are out. You suffered enough, you don't have to play anymore. If you catch it and risk yourself, you are rewarded for your effort and extreme pain, and the other person is out.
Dodgeball was never on the schedule. Nonetheless, the counselors would implement a game whenever we did not clean the bunk well enough.

Gaga
Again, the objective is to not get hit. Similar to dodgeball, the difference is that you cannot hold the ball in gaga, you have to whack it. Whack it as hard as you can at other children. You whack the ball with your fist, so that it moves faster and hurts more.
We weren't an athletic bunch, but the sports staff realized that if our lives were at stake, we would run. Even the kids with asthma.
That is what happens when fifteen-year-old boys make up sports. Violence, and kids crying and running away as fast as they can. The most similar game to this is skirmish (paintball) without protective gear.
Due to lack of coordination, many children ended up in the infirmary. 

Capture the Flag
Another sport where you try to run away. The idea is to get very nervous and run a lot. That is the idea of most Jewish sports. You run away from stuff that is trying to catch you or hit you, and you work up your heart rate with an anxiety attack.

Torah Baseball
I have a feeling that the camp rabbis were baiting us into learning Torah. I never hit a homerun, but I did know Rashi’s commentary on the Red Heifer, and that was a grand slam to my rabbi.
I am convinced that wasn’t a real sport. But I was good and they did call it baseball. That did work for me. And I did sweat when they called on me to answer the question.
Thinking back, they should've just told us we weren't athletes and showed us movies.

What Jewish Sports Mean
I loved these sports. It is a shame they don't have a Torah-Bee, more nontechnical sports focused on injuring people, or sports that you can play while eating lunch at a picnic table, in the Olympics. If gaga was a professional sport, I would be an athlete. If soccer was a sport played with people on all fours, looking like crabs, I would be a person the children looked up to. If I was allowed to catch the volleyball, I could have represented Israel in international competition.
But I will tell you this. I still play paper football, and there is no greater feeling of achievement in sports then when you see a folded paper towel land on the end of a table. That is the sense of accomplishment felt in Jewish competition. And that is what brings so many of our children Jewish pride at summer camp.