I awoke one morning in July of 2022 to the sound of rain pounding my cabin door. I looked over to my friend as we both had the same sad realization: Despite the droves of rain we heard outside, we still would have to spend the day at the beach.
Some context about my predicament: It was my final year at sleepaway camp, and the entire camp was about to embark on the yearly beach trip. Every year, beach day manages to fall on one of the few rainy days of the summer, and this year was somehow even wetter than ever before.
The rain came down in sheets all morning as we ate breakfast and prepared to head off. Though we all held onto the hope that the rain might let up during the 90-minute bus ride, as we pulled up to the beach, we saw the rain had indeed persisted, now a light sprinkle.
Despite the conditions, my friends and I were determined to make the most of our day. As we set up our things and sat around laughing with one another, the rain finally stopped. For a while it seemed as though we might salvage our failure of a beach day. Little did we know our troubles would persist.
Lunches(bagged sandwiches and chips) were distributed, and as we prepared to dig in, the flock of seagulls circling overhead grew immensely. Before long, their circling evolved into dive-bombing groups of campers amidst a cacophony of screams from the younger ones. Countless seagulls flapped their wings madly with bits of our lunches clutched in their beaks.
Though you might think that the day improved after our lunch
disaster, the downward spiral only intensified. The rain picked up once again, and its return brought lightning. As a safety measure, we were all told to retreat to the buses to shelter until the lightning stopped. But after an hour of waiting on the buses, the lighting had not let up, and we began the hour-and-a-half drive home.
If you were to add up the time we spent on the buses compared to at the beach, the total would be as follows: four hours on the bus versus one-and-a-half cold hours on the beach feeding the seagulls.
After arriving back at camp, morale was low. The day felt like a complete failure, and as we all sat around on the floor of our cabin waiting for dinner, we whined about the time we had wasted. Tears were shed, and fellow campers wanted to go home.
Yet as I looked at the group assembled around me, I realized that this was the first time in my six years at camp taking part in a long conversation with almost half of them. Until this year, I had never been in a cabin with any of them, and we had never really crossed paths. I was always satisfied with the friends I already had in my circle, but after spending this time with my other bunkmates, I realized I had been missing out on so many cool people around me.
Though I can’t say I found new best friends, that day did make me realize the importance of branching out. I found myself talking to new people more often and finally connecting with people I had known as acquaintances for years.
Though beach day itself was a bit of a failure, it opened my eyes to the valuable lesson of broadening my social circle. I learned that if I spent more time with the other people around me instead of with my closest friends, my life as a whole would be more fulfilling.
