Our church runs a week-long camp for girls ages 12 and up. After your first 4 years, you can be junior staff members, helping the younger girls. I went for 6 years, and loved it. I planned to come back at 18, but had to be out of state that week.
Although you can express interest in going to camp as a Tent Mom (supervising a campsite group, usually 6 to 8 girls), kitchen staff, first aid staff, or other adult, as with all jobs in our church, it's unpaid, and you are "called" by your leaders, and asked to go. I was only asked once, long after my older girls were adults, but before my youngest was old enough for camp. I thought that was slightly odd, since I'd always figured that if I went, it would be with one of my girls. Still, it wasn't too odd, and I was excited. I'd loved camp, I'd spent years as a Scout leader, and I felt prepared and enthusiastic.
Things had changed a bit since I was a kid. When I went, you didn't meet your Tent Mom or camp group until you arrived at camp. They've since changed it so that you all get together several times to meet each other, plan, get supplies, and the like. You also have two Tent Moms per group; again, having been in Scouts, I'd seen "two deep leadership" instituted, and I understood why. We had our meetings, figured out how many tents we'd need and who had them, and otherwise made our plans.
I'm used to camping. When I was a child, my family traveled frequently, but I only remember two nights in hotel rooms. We camped. I remember my parents choosing where we could go based on gas prices. We had a great tent and sleeping bags. My parents built a wooden "grub box" with a latch, to hold the dishes, silverware and food. Everything else, including the clothes we wore while camping, were too worn out to be used every day. They were the threadbare things, the things with holes, stains, or broken handles, the things that were mismatched. A towel or a pan or shirt or something else would get to the point that we'd relegate it to the camping stuff. This was pretty normal - I spent a lot of time in campgrounds, and everybody's camping stuff looked similar to ours.
When I was planning for camp as a Tent Mom, every now and then someone would suggest buying something new, and I'd say, "No, I have an old one that we can use." Our church leaders encouraged us to use what we had, and not spend too much, so I felt prepared and obedient.
Then we got to camp. The other camp moms and I were on totally different pages. People had bought brand new, themed and color co-ordinated stuff. There were pots still in cardboard boxes. At the camp site directly across the path from me, the Tent Mom had brought brand new, pale yellow towels. Yellow! In the forest! She had also brought co-ordinating art that she put on stakes and tied to the trees. Their camp theme was cherries, bright red on sunshine yellow backgrounds. She literally had a ruffled apron that she wore while she used a (new!) broom to sweep the paths. (I wanted to yell across, "It's all dirt! You won't get down to bedrock!" But I didn't.)
The other groups had hand decorated, personalized mailboxes for each person in their group. Our mailbox, that was for all of us in our camp, was a bucket. A non-decorated, non-personalized bucket. Yeah, I brought it. I brought the stained, used rope for our clothesline. Our one decoration was a posterboard with our group name (that year, all the groups went with cartoons for their group names). The mat in front of the tent was one that I'd bought years before on clearance for $2.54, then used at our home's door until it had balding spots. It didn't even say "WELCOME," or have a scripture printed on it; it was shaped like a fish.
I'm not exaggerating any of this.
Let me be clear - those kinds of women - the ones with new, co-ordinating everything - are impressive in a dozen different ways, and I admire them. I will just never BE them. If all evidence wasn't to the contrary, I would have no problem believing that we are from different planets. I felt, that week at camp, as I do pretty much every day, that other people were given a different owner's manual for their lives than I had been given, but that mine was the only one that made sense.
The other Tent Mom in our group was a lovely person, but she spent most of her time with the Tent Mom in the next camp over, because they were best friends back home. The girls were fantastic, and I loved them, but I did not have effortless conversation. They were all excited because when we got back home, the new Twilight book would be out; I love books, but not *those* books.
Anyway, all of that is incidental to the story; I just want to set the scene. I never "fit in."
The girls are divided by age, so all the 12 year olds are together. That was our age group. There were other 12 year old groups, as well On the first day, just after we'd set up our tents, the "First Year" groups were asked to send a leader up to a meeting with the camp director and her staff. I went for our group. There was a girl there who needed a tent group. It was explained to all of us that she hadn't lived in the area while we were planning, so she hadn't been assigned a group, and didn't have any friends to join. They wanted to know if any of us had room for her.
The first group Mom said, "Oh, I'd love to, but we just don't have enough." They had already made personalized everything - mailboxes, sweatshirts, gifts for each girl - and she didn't want this girl to be the only one without what the others had. The second said roughly the same thing. They'd planned meticulously, bringing just enough of everything, all matching, for the girls that were already in their group. Plus, their tents were small, and pretty full. The girl looked uncomfortable.
And there was me. We had no personalized anything; even our mail just went in a bucket. Yes, I'd brought gifts to give to the girls over the week - stickers, pencils, note cards - but I'd also thrown in extra of everything, "just in case." Plus, I remembered being partnered with a girl in my first year of camp, a girl who'd signed up late, and had no "camp buddy." It was great - we had tons of fun.
"We have plenty of room!" I said.
"Are you sure?" the leaders asked. "We don't want to put you out."
"I'm sure! No problem! We'd love to have her!" The girl smiled.
We had another girl in our group who'd come to camp without a buddy. She'd been with our group all through our preparation, but we did have an odd number. With the new girl, now we were even, and those two pretty much instantly declared each other to be their designated buddy. They were soon inseparable. All of the girls got along well, there was physical room in the tent, and we were glad to have her. Everything was great, and we all had fun. The other Tent Mom agreed with me that it was a good thing that we could add the late girl in.
And nobody griped that our stuff was old and weird and not pretty.
Those were the days before social media - imagine such a time! - and I lost track of most of "our" girls. Our camp had girls from all over the city, so we didn't even attend church in the same congregations. I was never asked to go to camp again. I assumed that either I'd taken my expected turn and all was well, or that I was just too out of step to be asked back. No hard feelings; I am out of step.
Anyway, years later, I found out that the girl who had arrived late had become so close to the girl who'd immediately become her friend that she became a frequent visitor in that girl's home. Time passed, and she actually ended up living with them, then being legally adopted by the family. And after a few more years, she got married, in the temple. (Our religion teaches that weddings outside the temple are "til death do we part," but marriages inside the temple can be forever.) I saw photos - she looked so happy, and so beautiful, and her adoptive family looked so proud.
It just really spoke to me that I'd had a teeny part in that. I certainly can't claim credit for anything in her life. It was a small camp - she would have met her sister there anyway. Because I am religious, I think that God put her in camp so that she could. What spoke to me was the idea that the weird leader, the one who was out of synch and sloppy and chaotic, the one who never fits, didn't get in the way of the plan.
And it's pure chance that I found any of this out. Nobody sought me out to tell me, personally. The girls might not even remember me.
Remember that the next time that you leave a situation feeling totally out of place, wondering why you were even there, and if somebody else shouldn't be doing it, instead. Maybe you're one piece in a puzzle whose completion you will never see. Maybe you helped good things to happen because you weren't quite as perfect as everyone around you. The way you are is OK, anyway, and doesn't hurt The Grand Plan.
And maybe, sometimes, you'll get to see some of the other pieces of the puzzle fall in around you, and you can see that, hey, I do fit.
