No Male Laps - How Good Intentions are Ruining a Classic American Institution
Published April 22, 2008
By Max C. Bookman
“No Male Laps.” That’s rule number one of being a counselor at Camp Eisner sleep away camp. Not “always remember to have fun” or “be a great role model for your campers.” No, those appear way further down the list. Rule number one is “No Male Laps.”
No Male Laps means that when my adorably innocent 9 year-old campers, many of whom have been separated from their mothers and fathers for the first time in their lives, want to sit on my lap, I must gingerly stand up, eliminating the male lap for them to sit on. Insurance reasons.
Five years earlier, I was a camper at the very same sleep away camp. But people didn’t think about those sorts of things back then. In five short years, the world’s changed.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again,” I yelped as my 13 year-old body dangled from the rafters of my bunk. I was suspended in the air. The only thing keeping me from falling seven feet to the cement floor was my underwear, hooked on a nail wedged into the rafter. This was my punishment.
The crime, Bare Assing, had taken place only minutes earlier. Bare Assing, a long standing sleep away camp tradition, generally takes place at night, when the counselors retreat behind the bunk for a “ten minute counselor meeting” (smoking cigarettes and pot).
Unsupervised, in the state of nature, we campers would relieve ourselves from the evening’s dinner in the bathroom stalls, but instead of using toilet paper, we learned that a hilarious replacement was a counselor’s bed sheets. Bare Assing.
Sean, our counselor, freshly graduated from high school, was not a fan of Bare Assing. Though he’d admitted to taking part in the tradition himself when he was a camper, Sean had fallen victim to the prank on more than one occasion. Luckily, he had never caught us in the act. This time was different. We were caught. Mid-Bare Ass if you will.
His response was swift. My buddy and I had gone from innocently enjoying a mischievous camp tradition to hanging from the rafters by our underwear in a matter of seconds.
So there I hung in the air, yelping for forgiveness. Sean wouldn’t let us down until we apologized and promised to never touch his bed with our bare bottoms again. “I’m sorry, really I am,” I begged. My underwear ripped. I fell into Sean’s arms. We both laughed. That was the last time anyone Bare Assed Sean’s bed. In fact, I never disobeyed him ever again. Needless to say, male laps weren’t much of a concern back then.
There are other new rules that ascended to paramount importance in the years since I was a camper. No Two-Armed Hugs, for example. If a camper wants to give you a hug, you must leave one arm free, away from the camper, so that if he or she suddenly feels threatened or in any way uncomfortable with the hug, there will be an escape route. Insurance reasons.
No Private Talks is another favorite among the administrations that run today’s sleep away camps. No Private Talks means that a camper and counselor can never be by themselves in an enclosed space. For example, if a camper realizes that he forgot his swimming goggles when he gets to the pool (it happens more than you think), you must recruit a second camper to return to the bunk with the both of you to retrieve the goggles. If you must have a private conversation with another camper, it must be in an open space that is clearly visible to others. Insurance reasons.
But the best rule is No Male Laps, preventing campers from sitting on a male counselor’s lap at an embarrassingly wrong moment. “The average 18 year-old male inadvertently gets more than 50 erections every day,” says the camp director during counselor orientation, “you don’t want a camper to sit down on you during one of those fifty times. Plus, there’re insurance reasons.”
These were some of the first words I heard out of the camp director’s mouth. An analysis of erections. At a sleep away camp.
Now, all these rules are good-intentioned. They were instituted because in the five years that I moved from camper to counselor, our society became acutely aware of the dangers of pedophilia, spurred by the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church and increased publication of horror stories in a variety of appalling situations ranging from elementary schools to after school sports teams, to sleep away camps.
But even with their good intentions, such rules bring along some negative side effects. What’s most evident to counselors is that they
uncomfortably sexualize situations and relationships that are utterly non sexual. Try explaining to a 9 year-old girl why you always stand up when she wants to sit on your lap. Not easy. It’s been a long journey from hanging from the rafters by my underwear to having to think twice about helping my camper tie his bathing suit when he asks.
As a counselor, I play many roles. At any given time of day, I am a father, a mother, an older brother, a police officer, judge and jury, and sometimes I’m Jesus Christ himself. But restrictions that force counselors to constantly be mindful that their actions may inadvertently result in getting fired or sued make all those roles somewhat artificial. Campers feel the distance, too. The result is a damaged relationship between camper and counselor.
We Americans too commonly try to solve problems by combating them with blanket solutions, instead of identifying specific issues. Male Laps and Two-Armed Hugs should not be the cause for concern – it’s allowing pedophiles to work in close proximity to children. Therefore, schools and camps and similar institutions should be vigilant in examining employees who are constantly sitting children on their laps, continuously giving Two-Armed Hugs, and always going for private talks.
In the meantime, if you are one of the thousands of college students who will work at a sleep away camp this summer, remember, when your camper wants to sit on your lap, be sure to ask yourself, “do I have an erection right now?” Because as we all know, erections, children, and combating pedophilia all go hand in hand.
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