...nor can I recall any kids I grew up with in the mid 1970s/early '80s who did. Maybe they did and I didn't know about it, but all the kids in my neighborhood were around all summer and I don't remember waiting around for them to get back. I don't even recall anybody at school talking about summer camp. I've always thought it was something made up for, like, Friday the 13th movies. Or Parent Trap, yeah, that was the other one. Am I the only one for whom "summer camp" pretty much means nothing at all?

I grew up on the Gulf Coast and thought the same thing- that this was something kids only did on TV or movies, like building snowmen and skating on ponds. Other than 5-day Bible Camp (like 'Band Camp' + Jesus), we never heard of anyone going to a cabin-in-the-woods-on-a-lake Meatballs kind of summer camp. Now I live in Wisconsin, where camps and snowmen abound! Guess I just grew up in the wrong state.

Yeah, ditto.

I'm pretty well convinced that this is an upper-middle-class East Coast phenomenon that gets put into movies, books, and online magazine articles, because, hey, large chunks of the media industry grew up in upper-middle-class East Coast communities.

There's a generational thing as well, I think, too. People who were kids in 60s seem way more likely to have done this type of camping than anybody who grew up in the 80s and 90s.

I was actually talking about this recently with some friends, all of us Midwesterners, none of whom had gone or knew any other kids who got the full-summer, Meatballs experience. Five days or a week at Girl/Boy Scout Camp or Bible Camp is about the most we'd ever heard of. Some of our East Coast-raised friends did. But not us.

I begged my parents to go to "camp", even though I never knew anyone who went either, but it looked SO FUN in the movies! Apparently my folks actually liked having kids and took us on vacation with them!

--Apparently my folks actually liked having kids and took us on vacation with them!--

Great point. Vacations were time spent *together* as a family. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how we did it...

Maybe it is a Northeast thing. You can't throw a rock around here without hitting a camp.

There are also 4H and Y camps where you don't need to be well off to go.

The one I went to looked just like one from those creepy movies. I still had a great time though.