Marlboro, NJ (June 9,
2015) – Minutes, maybe even seconds after the camp directors hit send on the
Bunk Assignment emails, area mothers are sent into a panic-stricken frenzy to
figure out exactly who is in their children’s bunk for the upcoming seven week
camp season. Through group texts, emails
and phone calls, mothers can almost pinpoint the exact roster of kids who will
cohabitate with their offspring for a little more than a month and a half. Lists are hastily compiled on Post It notes,
on the backs of junk mail, and sometimes, using advanced Excel spreadsheets to
enhance a parent’s quantitative analysis of the composition of the bunk makeup.
For these mothers there are no two bigger days on the entire
calendar than a day in early to mid June when bunk assignments are announced
and a day in late August when parents learn who their children’s teachers will
be for the upcoming school year. The
school year, a grueling ten-month marathon of homework, carpooling, and
procrastination can be navigated in a much calmer and peaceful manner depending
on a child’s teacher. But this means
very little to these parents.
“This year Allysyn had a horrible teacher, what’s her name, who
assigned a ton of homework for no good reason.
I was asked early in the year if I wanted to switch her into a different
class but I was already filling out my bunk request essay that afternoon and
totally blanked on calling back,” explained Jenni Goldstock, 43, of Manalapan,
NJ. “My focus on that time was that even
though camp didn’t start for nine plus months, I wanted to express to the directors
which campers should be in her bunk so she can have the perfect summer.”
To those uneducated about the compilation process, the
similarities between the bunk and teacher announcements may look obvious but
that’s not always the case. With a
plethora of different names based on religion, ethnicity, etc, a school roster
may be created with relative ease as each student’s name represents a unique individual. However,
as lists are compiled for a certain boy’s bunk though, there may be six or
seven Jakes, Jacks, Jonathans, Joshuas or Davids so it may be tough to discern
which one is which since most have names starting with “Gold” and “Rosen” and
end with any variation of “owitz”, “berg” or “stein”. This can prove very confusing in this age of
text messaging and spell checking.
“Last summer, based on my spreadsheet algorithm, my Jake was
so excited to be in the same bunk with Jake Goldstein from Montville (Jake
Goldstein from Syosset was already known to be in a different bunk) who’s a
fantastic kid but he ended up with Jack Goldberg who’s not so much,” lamented
Shelly Rosenberg of Larchmont, NY who sends her child to Camp Huron Lake. Rosenberg received Jake’s bunk assignment
this morning and was overcome with excitement about his placement in Bunk
29. Husband Dan was perplexed. “She’s
screaming like a lunatic ‘JAKE’S IN BUNK 29!! JAKE’S IN BUNK 29!!’ so I ask her
who else is and she says, ‘I have no idea.’”
Shelly then ran straight down to the family computer to print out return
address labels denoting Jake’s new bunk.
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