JUST HAVE FUN BY LEIA WITHEE

Have you ever been in a job or a place where the only goal is to be ridiculous and have fun?

 I have. It’s the way I’ve spent every summer since I was 10 and for the past five summers it’s been my job.

It’s led me to spend my summers covered in paint, with hands permanently colored all colors of the rainbow. It’s led me to spend an entire month making up songs and cheers and reward systems based entirely around dried beans just so my co-staff and I can convince 15 year  olds that they’re the coolest thing that exists. I’ve  letters from a mysterious eight  turning nine year old boy named Nestor whose favorite color is ordinary khaki. He joined our cabin on his 9th birthday and we spent the whole day celebrating him, despite the fact that my  kids insisted he didn’t exist. I’ve even spent 36 hours dressed up like Peter Pan, and another 36 dressed up as Zebra screaming and cheering until all that’s left of my voice is a raspy cough.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this semester. During the summer I allow myself to be so carefree and to have so much fun, yet during the school year I lose some of that abandoned. Why is that? It’s not because of a lack of responsibility in the summer. If anything, I have more responsibilities. I have the health and happiness  of my campers to care for.  The only conclusion I can come to is for the eight weeks I’m at camp, I silence my VOJ. It has no place there, no one is judging anyone for the weird things we do. Then, when I come home, I allow myself to listen to my VOJ again. I allow myself to bend under perceived judgement from others and to step back from the person I am at camp. There’s no reason for that. Everything is infinitely more enjoyable over the summer when everyone leaves their VOJ’s behind and just has fun.

Every summer, every session, in each cabin we create a cabin contract. Ideals to live by if you will. They always end the same way;  Have Fun written in multicolored letters in all caps with just about a thousand exclamation marks.

I want to bring that out of camp and into the “real world.” Why should it only exist within the confines of two months? It’s time to quiet down my VOJ and to bring the childlike creativity and laughter I have at camp into my everyday life and to just have fun.

Maybe that kind of joy is something everyone could do with a little bit more of.