By Julie Chen Allen
I’m a newcomer to summer camp registration. Some of the veteran moms tried to warn me, but I did not listen. Now I am uncovering the painstaking problems to procrastinating on camp enrollment. Apparently, there seems to be a secret code to securing the perfect summer camp schedule. It involves some combination of mental torture, Zen meditation, sheer luck, and mathematical genius.
If the week-long art camp is full, and the two-week-long nature camp has five people on the waitlist, should we wait or sign up for acting camp costing twice as much? Or if the science camp is held in July but not in August, and the soccer camp is only four days in June, when do we want to squeeze in a trip to Sea World? Oy. It feels like a standardized test.
Maybe I could try sheer annoyance.
Me:
Where are we now on the waiting list?
Camp: Tenth.
Me: Any change?
Camp: No.
Me: Now?
Camp: No.
Me: What about now?
Camp: Ma’am, it’s been the same since you called 45 minutes ago, the same as it was during lunch, and the same as it was when you called yesterday. Tenth.
Me: [silence] …So when should I call again?
Or maybe the trick is to spread my risk, like playing the stock market. If I just put the kid on enough waiting lists, he’s bound to get on somewhere, right?
Me: Er, son, the only available camp left is…the Organize Your Closet seminar at the senior activity center.
Son: [?!?!?!]
Or better yet, what if I just packed the kids up and ship them to Grandma’s? I remembering playing in my Grandma’s yard until sundown and turned out OK, I think.
Me: Hi, Mom, what are you doing?
Mom: Not too much.
Me: Wanna take the kids for the summer?
Mom: What? I can’t hear you. My hearing aid must’ve ran out of battery again…
Me: But wait…..
Mom: I’ll call you back, honey. [click]
Me: You don’t even wear a hearing aid!
Lesson here? Get on those summer camp registrations early. Otherwise you will be like me, plotting the logistics of stuffing my kids under my office desk for the summer.
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