On his radio show yesterday, Dennis Prager talked about this 17 year old girl camp counselor who said she had to have a week of training, including sexual harassment training, before she started work.
I worked as a summer camp counselor at Pacific Union College in the summer of 1982. We got a week of training.
I was a model camp counselor. I was headed for my junior year of high school and I fell in love with this eighth grade girl under my charge and she fell in love with me. We did not express our feelings in a physical way. We just had a lot of conversation. And then over the next nine months, we wrote each other letters.
Our love was transgressive, but it was so strong that we forsook the bourgeois boundaries that cramped the style of so many of our contemporaries.
Finally, in June 1983, we met up again in person one weekend at Pacific Union College. We sat next to each other in Thursday night Bible study.
There was so much anticipation before our meeting. I remember when I walked in the room, this girl and all her friends turned around to look at me.
Our conversation that night was awkward. Then I went to play a basketball game and invited her to come watch me. She did for a few minutes and then she did disappeared. We never connected that weekend. I don’t know what went wrong.
I think I didn’t pay her enough attention and by going off to play basketball, she felt like I was giving her the cold shoulder and so she then gave me the cold shoulder.
We did exchange a meaningful hug Saturday night when she left and that was it. No more letters. No more longings. Finito.
I wonder if Air Supply ever did a song about Young Love?
I hear she became a really religious Seventh-Day Adventist. I think her name was Shelly. She was so cute and sweet. Normally I am a very strong man and it takes a particularly attractive woman to break down my otherwise sturdy boundaries. Perhaps I was not as morally strong in those days as I am today.
I remember the hug goodbye. It was full and rich. I was just dying for female affection. I went prowling around later that night, telling my buddies that I had to get some “action.”
Soon thereafter, I bought condoms for the first time in my life (never had reason to use them for another six years, Baruch HaShem).
Why did I not realize that all the action I needed was in the Torah and all I had to do was to scoop it out?
Dennis Prager: “When I was a camp counselor, there was no training and I suspect we did a better job in a much freer time.”
“I’d like to know in the history of American camping, how many girls were sexually abused by camp counselors?”
Well, none were abused by me. I was totally respectful.
Dennis Prager: “This is the leftist vision of society — risk free. Better safe than sorry. To which my argument is — better free than safe.
“Do I want some safety? Of course. Should there be rules on pilots drinking? Yes. Being non-leftist doesn’t make you an anarchist. It’s a terrible story this girl told me about how they can’t touch these kids. They can’t hug them. They can’t give them a well-earned smack.
“I gave full permission to the counselors of my kids to give my kids a well earned smack. There was no counselor in the history of my kids’ camping who abused my kids with smacks.
“I used to give Richie a noogie if the clouds did not cover the sun in time for a photo I wanted to take… I’d go, Richie, you’ve got ten seconds to get a cloud.
“For those of you who know photography, you never take a photo in bare sunlight.
“A noogie is with your knuckle a good one into the shoulder.
“Richie thought it was hilarious. He was making all these incantations to make the clouds move. This is how guys horse around until the 1960s decided to make guys into girls.”
