Summer vacation brought almost unbelievable happiness, a magnetic appeal akin to freedom, for I was generally allowed to spend time as I wished. I seldom encountered schoolmates, and if there was a rendezvous, it was never brought about by my doing. It was far more convenient to call upon my two neighborhood friends, or to simply amuse myself. Summer was not complete bliss, however, for yearly it brought a dreaded horror to life...camp! My first encounter following Kindergarten...Day Camp. I was terrified upon discovering that I was to exist amid a mob of virtual barbarians for the better part of each weekday. This lasted for but two weeks, yet it seemed an eternity. Each morning I boarded a school bus brimming with children to then endure a jostling, thirty minute ride to the location of the camp itself. Once there, we were to join our assigned group and the daily activities would commence. There were art projects, games, competition, hikes and swimming lessons. Many activities would have been quite pleasing had I been in the company of friends. However, shyness had no place at camp, and I felt constantly ill at ease. An additional undesirable factor possessed the name "Betsy." In effect, Betsy was the group bully, resembling, ironically, the "Peanuts" character "Lucy" in both form and personality. On one of her particularly shining moments, she told me and another equally shy girl that she would make us sleep overnight in the boys' tent on the last night. Needless to say, we were scared silly although the threat could never have materialized. Another camp, owned and operated by the Girl Scouts, was also a source of much summertime duress, although I recall very little about this camp other than the fact that the homeward-bound bus was a welcome sight. The final camp to which I was sent for a week's time during two consecutive summers, was a King's Daughters Camp. I never relished the idea of rooming with people I did not know, yet here I was obliged to do so. Again, the camp was regimented into various activity schedules to which each camper was to adhere. I was friendly, but not outgoing and confident, and as time crept by at a snail's pace, I became more and more hounded by loneliness. I wrote my family many postcards lamenting my undesirable situation, but time thus spent only seemed to make the problem worse. PAGE 11 Chapter 2 My Brothers CHAPTER TWO My Brothers