The Cost of Summer Camp

The Mud Puddle had quite the adventurous summer. Between sojourns to Maui and weeks basking in the spoilage of Grammie and Grampy’s house he was not ready to go back to school at all.

And the biggest event of his summer (he would probably argue of his LIFE) was summer camp. It was a day camp put on at his gymnastics school (yes the MP takes gymnastics. He loves it and is rather quite good). He spent four blissful weeks surrounded by 11 year old girls and cool 12 year old boys eating Doritos (earning him the title “Dorito Man”) and living in his bathing suit. He jumped on the trampoline, swam in the pool and managed to spend way outside my Summer Camp Budget.

As we all know by this point I am one anal retentive mother. I run a tight ship and usually only ‘splurge’ on books and the occasional cookie. But this summer I found that the price of keeping up with the 11 year olds was quite funny to watch. And less funny to pay for.

The first (rather pedestrian) expense was the vending machines. I packed him a small cooler of lunch, snacks, and drinks every day (it felt like that scene in the “Breakfast Club” when Emilio Estevez pulls out his giant brown bag of lunch) and he would eat it all and be hungry when he got home. The school also has soda and candy machines in the waiting area.

Early on the MP made it clear he would REALLY appreciate me slipping him a few bucks everyday so he could get a snack and a drink. Now, he is not allowed to drink soda. I figure you can drink soda when you are twenty and the longer I can keep it off your teeth the better. But he had his first (?) taste of it this summer and decided he “liked” it.

I quickly learned this was an exaggeration. He liked the first sip and after that it was too ‘fizzy’ or too ‘rootbeery’ or something. That’s fine. I am all for him deciding not to do something as opposed to me telling him not to do it. You own the decision and I am not the bad guy for once. But that meant I had cans of Sprite (he calls it Sprint) with a sip out of it coming home every day. He would wolf down whatever snack he bought but wind up bringing the soda in the car and then forget it. One more thing for me to pick up. Awesome.

So let’s say I gave him $3 a day for the twenty days he was at camp: That was $60. Ok, not too bad.

But then the sweatshirt happened. The coolest kid at summer camp, the twelve year old (I am guessing only child) with cool kid hair and a PHONE (lord almighty!) wore, according to the MP, the coolest, neatest, scariest sweatshirt the free world has ever know!!!! It zipped up all the way to the TOP OF YOUR HEAD. And had EYES. And the MP HAD TO HAVE ONE!!!! So I made him ask the Cool Kid where he got it and we hit the store. We had no luck in the boy’s section but they did carry them in the men’s department. I had the MP try on the smallest one they had and it fit like a dress. I wrote down the name of the brand figuring I could find a smaller one online and just for fun looked at the price tag:
$70

For a sweatshirt. For a kid who just yesterday had to buy all new pants b/c the ones I had bought a month ago for school are now too short.
From a mother who rarely, if ever, spends $70 on an article of clothing for herself.

GULP

So first things first, could I get this stupid sweatshirt in his size? I went to the website found an online store and located one in his size-ish. Still too big most likely but for $70 you better wear it for the rest of your elementary school career.

Now I had a decision to make: to buy it or not. This was tough. He is barely seven, and if I am going to start shelling out that kind of dough on clothes now what happens when he is a (*gasp*) teenager. So as I often due I thought about my misspent youth and all the Outback Red and Esprit clothes I HAD TO HAVE. And recalled the deal my mom and I had. She would pay for half and I would pay for half. Ok, $35 for a sweatshirt seemed reasonable.

I put my proposal to the MP. If he wanted a wicked cool, but equally expensive sweatshirt, he was going to have to cough up half the dough. He quickly agreed and I reminded him that meant hand over what you have now and that borrow against allowance for a month.
YES YES A MILLION TIMES YES JUST GET ME THAT SWEATSHIRT.

So I did. It fits slightly better than a dress. He talks to me through the face holes which is annoying but he loves it and every time he asks for some toy or his allowance all I have to say is ‘sweatshirt’.

So in conclusion Summer Camp ran me $130 more than I had planned but he walked away with a collection of new friends, a better understanding of his liquid refreshment likes and dislikes, and the best summer of his LIFE.