Welcome to the Moth podcast. I'm Amanda Garcia, your host for this episode. I'm a big summer camp person. In fact, it's safe to say I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my summer camp. Not just because camp shaped me as a person and led me to the moth, but because if it hadn't been for camp, my mom would have never developed a crush on the cute, and from what I've heard, mischievous, kitchen boy, my father.

I've spent a total of 12 summers attending camp, first as a camper, then on staff.

And my experience is stuck with me. It will take me less than five minutes into any

conversation to bring up summer camp. And just this morning, I received a photo of a camp friend,

still in the hospital, holding her newborn baby. And my indoctrination into camp culture began long

before I ever stepped onto those 700 acres in southeast Connecticut when I was 11.

The men and women I grew up calling Aunt and Uncle bore no blood relation to my parents.

They were their camp friends.

My family would sing camp songs at dinner.

I knew how to build a fire at a young age, and my first summer at incarnation camp was a big deal. So yes, I guess you could call me a

summer camp, Nepo Baby. But even if you haven't spent your summers competing in color wars

or making beaded friendship bracelets, camp serves as this perfect storm of awkwardness and hormones

that make it a great backdrop for stories and memories.

On this episode, we've got two stories all about summer camp and what you take away from it

when summer ends. First up is Jean Spindler. She told this at an Ann Arbor StorySlam,

where the theme of the night was without a net. Here's Jean live at the mall.

So I was a summer camp professional for the last 16 years in Stillem.

And for eight of those years, I was a program director at a co-ed overnight camp in the beautiful state of Maine

next to this gorgeous lake. And, you know, as a program director, one of the things that I got

to do was basically playing all the fun. I was the master of fun and I was the controller of

organized chaos, which I loved loved best job in the world.

And maybe my favorite part of the job was pranks.

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