Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants Based on a True Story

Chapter One: Coming Home(early) Camp PinecrestEvery summer, Camp Pinecrest welcomes hundreds of young women from all over the country and the world. Campers ages 6-16 will find a nurturing atmosphere where they can explore, compete, create and discover! Camp Pinecrest provides the tools necessary to grow from a confident young girl into a successful woman.With over 30 acres of grounds and extensive waterfront property, campers at Pinecrest choose between any number of activities, from swimming in Lake Michigan to learning new crafts in the Recreational Lounge. Pinecrest also offers tennis, basketball, various athletic fields, an obstacle course, and stables, with forty horses.Camp Pinecrest can accommodate up to 200 girls per session. Campers are assigned a tent cabin, depending on their age. Typically, there are 10-12 campers per cabin and a counselor. Showers and bathrooms are located just a few steps away from the tents -- which are equipped with electricity.Nearby Camp Woodview is our brother camp. Though we share some facilities, activities and experiences at Camp Pinecrest are still strictly female. The two camps do commingle on special occasions during each session. Remember, sessions are filling fast! When I was twelve my favorite book was about a girl named Marjorie. Marjorie wore pigtails and went to sleepaway camp, with woods and water and tents and friends. I wanted to hang out with Marjorie, or if that wasn't possible, have a life more like hers. Overnight camp sounded like the perfect place to help turn me into a real girl instead of the Formica girl I was becoming in our hi-rise luxury apartment. It was 1977, and we had just moved to the Gold Coast, a neighborhood on the near north side of Chicago.Ours was a universe of glass, chrome, Berber carpet, and many, many cubes my mom lovingly referred to as Our Parsons Tables. Everything was clean and shiny and in a specific order that never budged. Dinner always featured one of four rotating meats (ground beef, chicken, pork chop, lamb chop, repeat) followed by a Jim Brooks or Burroughs sitcom, then a Pudding Pop. It never changed. Well, to be fair, for a few months in 1982, we tried Tuscan Bars, but returned to Pudding Pops shortly after.Some deeply longing part of me believed there was something better than the four walls of our airconditioned splendor, a real place without decoratorchosen taupes and caramels and corners. Even though the capability to google the words "summer camp-Midwest" was two full decades into the future, I was a crafty information gatherer and ordered myself a handbook called The Camp and School Guide out of the back of the New York Times Magazine section.After poring over the book for a few days, I found the perfect place: Camp Pinecrest, a couple hours north, in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Its brother camp was across the lake and contained boys with whom we would surely share socials and underpants-centered pranking. We asked around the families we knew and found out that Faith's best friend Shelly had been going there for years and loved it. Faith agreed to join me."I'm not sure if you're a sleepaway camp person," my mom warned me. But I knew she knew nothing! (said haughtily, to self) and had no idea about the new me, the me who would soon be whittling things from corncobs and singing, arm in arm, with other real girls. I hovered my hot breath over my mom's shoulder as she filled out the forms. She suggested we start with two weeks and see how it went, but I knew anything less than the full eight would be a disappointment. A week later, the welcome packet arrived, and I sharpened my pencil and began marching around, ticking items off the "Things to Bring" list.The packet suggested we buy our supplies at a place called the Camp and School Store. It was in downtown Chicago, on the seventh floor of an old-style building oSoloway, Jill is the author of 'Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants Based on a True Story', published 2005 under ISBN 9780743272179 and ISBN 074327217X.