Love, Camp, and Nice Jewish Girls

By Rob Dixter

Listening to my parents talk about how they met made me wonder if maybe that was supposed to happen to me as well. They met at camp, back when "we weren't worried about the ozone" (pronounced O Zone, because my mom believes that there are zones for every letter of the alphabet). My father was the head lifeguard and my mom was the section head for the oldest girls' unit. They were both twenty-two and between them they were responsible for the lives of about two hundred children. I am currently twenty-six and the only way I remember to even cut my fingernails is because they keep getting caught in my front door when I shut it.

That all said, you can imagine both my excitement and apprehension when my parents shipped me off for the summer. I felt destined to meet the girl of my dreams, even though I was only eleven and puberty was farther away then the next Star Wars installment. Camp Waha Valley was a Jewish camp, but not too Jewish (in order not to offend too many Jews, I gather). For instance, they had a Friday night service consisting of singing songs, but no songs about Judaism, Moses or even Noah and his ark. [Except, of course, the time I tried to lead everyone in a hearty rendition of Dreidle, Dreidle, Dreidle, only to be drowned out by some lunkhead exclaiming it was the middle of July and Hanukkah wasn't until August].

There was a prayer before the dinner on Friday, which was a quick and simple thanks for the bread. It was said in both English and Hebrew so everyone could understand it. It got me wondering if it mattered to God which language we said it in. Did he understand Hebrew better? Did English reach him faster? I never really asked anyone for an answer but I jotted down my query and promised myself that, should He ever present himself to me in the form of a burning bush, it would be the first thing out of my mouth. Anyway, I was in search of a nice Jewish girl that I could marry. That was my summer goal, even though it had crept up on my parents by surprise. Kind of like bad Mexican food, my dad likes to point out. Twenty-nine years and the spark still hasn't died.

When I arrived at Waha Valley the task looked much more daunting then I could imagine. There were hundreds of girls. But were they all nice Jewish girls? I approached my counselor, Chip (why were all counselors named Chip?) about my search. "No such thing as a nice Jewish girl," he said. " But I know a few dirty ones who do things to make your eyes roll back into your head." I could not understand why I would want my eyes to roll back into my head, nor did I think that eye rolling would really impress my parents when I brought her home. Here I was, an eleven-year-old boy looking for the girl of my dreams, and I had just been told by my respected mentor that there was no such thing as a nice Jewish girl. I began to ponder that fact and decided that if I couldn't find a nice Jewish girl, I would find one that liked Dodge Ball. I tried to approach Chip about that, but when I got to his cabin all I heard from inside was, "Trust me he'll never find out" and a girl's voice reply, "I want to leave my socks on". I immediately assumed that Chip was planning a surprise birthday party. Although why the girl needed her socks eluded me.

My next stop for help was Michael Shmelberg. Shmelberg -- or Shmelly as we called him back then (and at his wedding) -- had the biggest collection of girl magazines I had ever seen. He had four of them. "Girl magazines", of course, referring to magazines that feature women but whose target audience is not females (nor eleven year old boys named Shmelly, come to think of it). Shmelly claimed he knew a lot about naked girls, which, when you're eleven (and sadly when you're twenty-six, too), you interpreted to mean he knew a lot about women in general. I often wondered just how many nice Jewish girls ended up posing for those magazines; probably about the same number of nice Jewish men who ended up playing professional rugby. That morning in his cabin, Shmelly offered to show me where babies come from and how pancake syrup wasn't just for breakfast anymore, but I told him that instructional swim started in five minutes and I wanted to make sure I could still fit into my trunks. He called me a wussy, saying he did not understand why Mindy liked me. Mindy? Mindy who? It was then that I learned that, apparently, Mindy Vanksberg thought I was cute. I got that much out of Shmelly before he returned to the library.

Mindy Vanksberg, I said. Mindy Vanksberg. Mindy Vanksberg. I thought if I said her name three times it might help me to get over the shock that a nice Jewish girl thought I was cute. But all it really did was embarrass me on the dock during instructional swim when I realized my whole class had heard what I just said. They all started laughing at me, forcing me to pull out a return insult. (When you're eleven the only way to get someone to stop laughing at you is to insult someone else) So I did. I said, "Oh ya, (always start off with "Oh ya" -- it gets people to shut up), well Tim (and I pointed at him, too) showers in his bathing suit!" And the laughter directed at me did stop, but no new laughter began. Apparently letting people know you shower wearing a bathing suit is no big deal when you're eleven.

That evening at dinner Mindy Vanksberg approached me. I told her I had heard she thought I was cute. She smiled. I told her I thought she was a nice Jewish girl. Her smile stopped and her face had a look of confusion. I quickly rebounded by saying I liked her Hello Kitty barrettes, and told her of all the Kittys, Hello was my favorite. She smiled again.

Mindy and I went out all summer. We held hands and danced together and held hands again. That was about it. In fact, even though I was going out with her, it was only Shmelly who had seen her naked. He had camped out at the top window to the girls cabin to watch them change. It was quite an elaborate set up, he even had a fridge up there. I had finally met my nice Jewish girl at camp just like my parents. I started making plans for the wedding and the story we would tell our kids about how we met. And someday soon I might even kiss her.

As the summer wore on we became inseparable. Always holding hands and sharing sodas. (Seeing as this was the eighties, we didn't use straws, which heightened the romance.) The other guys in my cabin kept asking me if I had gotten to second base yet, but seeing as I had no idea what first base was and since Mindy didn't even like baseball, I said no.

With three days left of camp, my bunk scheduled a big baseball game at another camp, Camp Wahito. We had been competing with them all summer and this final game would determine who had the better team. Of course it fell on the same day as Mindy's swim races. I was torn. The guys on the team needed me, because no one else knew how to put on jock straps, but Mindy wanted me to stay and watch her swim. I won't say which I chose, but that night as I lay in bed, a girl named Tiffany dropped by our cabin. She said she had a note for me. After all the guys finished Ooooh-ing, I read it. Basically it said how disappointed Mindy was in me and that she thought we should just be friends. At the time I thought it was kind of nice of her to still want to be friends, that it was a very original concept, and I viewed our relationship as being very grown up. It was only later that I realized that the "being friends" bit was a line used more often then "Do you have change for a dollar?" So much for getting married. So much for the nice Jewish girl. And so much for the pictures of Mindy that Shmelly tried to sell me.

I left camp that summer with a broken heart and confused ideas about love and nice Jewish girls. I had heard my parents tell me how they met over and over again. The following year I went back to camp all fired up and ready to try again. Mindy was there but we didn't talk much, she once asked me to get off her toe. That was the summer I met Jordana. She was my next nice Jewish girl. There were a few more after that -- all nice, all Jewish. But I still haven't married any of them. At least none that I know of.

Rob Dixter is a freelance writer in New York City.