Areas of Unrest

4 July 1999 - My Summer of Sam

I drove over to Santa Monica today to do a bit of shopping (still can't find the right type of CD shelves, sigh, but did get a jigsaw puzzle) and continued my movie binge by seeing Summer of Sam. It's certainly provocative, though the racial overtones that Spike Lee inserts are uncomfortable. I also got a bit annoyed at overuse of the f-word. Every fucking character in the whole fucking film talks the same fucking way. The character I liked best was the punk rocker, though I think a mohawk might be anachronistic for 1977. I am really sure that the word "skank" was not in use in New York in 1977; in fact, I don't think I ever heard it until the 1990's. But my guess is that the target audience for this film is a bit younger than I am and will never notice. There is certainly enough drama to keep one from caring about the minor details that don't fit. Though I really do wonder if Spike Lee intended the scene with the talking dog to be funny.

Anyway, this got me thinking about the summer of 1977. It was the summer after my freshman year of college and I got a job as a counselor at a Jewish Federation camp in the Catskills. Actually, I worked first at one camp and didn't last long. Basically, I was overwhelmed trying to deal with a dozen 11 year old girls. Particularly when some of them had some pretty serious problems, e.g. the sisters who were afraid their father would come and kidnap them and take them away to Canada. The major side effect of that job was meeting a guy who would later propose to me and would eventually be the first in a long string of men who married the very next woman they dated after breaking up with me. But that's another story.

Anyway, a week back at my folks' place and I was desparate enough to get away that I took another job at another summer camp. One thing that happened there is something that I am decidedly not proud of. Pretty much all of the counselors were the same age (about 19) and we were still in that social mode that divides the world sharply into insiders and outsiders. And one counselor, a girl named Meryl, was the reject, the one everyone picked on. My social insecurities were strong enough that I picked on her just as mercilessly as anyone else. I remember one night somebody said something like "you know, we need Meryl. If it weren't her, it would be one of us." And that was exactly what I was afraid of. For those few weeks I had the feeling of power of being part of the attacking clique and, sad to say, I enjoyed it.

The other thing I wanted to mention about that summer has to do more directly with Son of Sam. We were always accusing one or another of the male counselors of being Son of Sam. (By the way, that was one part of the movie that definitely did ring true.) Well, the camp lifeguard was named David Berkowitz and he had a day off and had driven down to the city the weekend that Son of Sam (whose name was also David Berkowitz) was arrested. It's not exactly an uncommon name and our David was quite a bit younger and all - but it gave us all a shock. And, inevitably, he had to live with that nickname the rest of the summer.

Should I ever say anything like "gee, I wish I was nineteen again" please slap me. Or make me reread this entry.