A Daughterly Transition



By Tony Kornheiser



Sunday, July 7 1996; Page F01

The Washington Post 



My daughter left for camp last week. She's 13. She is in the middle of what they call the

"awkward age" for girls. It's an age where girls are under hormonal attack and tend to fly off

the handle at the slightest thing. For example, my daughter recently burst into tears at the sight

of me opening up a can of V8 juice. Some of her friends had just sworn off meats and fish to

protest animals being killed for food. My daughter must have felt some peer pressure, since

she said, accusingly: "Do you realize how many vegetables have to die for you to quench your

thirst?" 



The "awkward age" begins at 10, and lasts approximately until the end of time.



I was pleased for the opportunity to drive my daughter to the bus stop because I wanted to

talk with her about camp. I loved camp -- I went for 15 summers -- and I wanted to tell her

about what camp was like when I went, back in what she likes to call "the olden days."



She was very enthusiastic about spending this quality time with her good old Dad.



And by that I mean she agreed to sit in the car -- provided none of her friends actually saw

her in the car with her father; that would be so embarrassing. I suggested she could lie down

in the back seat, and I would drop a blanket over her, and she could pretend she was

President Clinton, bada-bing.



I think the dilemma of being a 13-year-old girl is best summed up by a book I've heard

about, titled something like "I Hate You and I Wish You Would Die, but First Can You Drive

Me to the Mall?"



Anyway, she sat in the car with me and listened as I yammered on and on about camp and

how great it was. I went to Camp Keeyumah in northeastern Pennsylvania. So many of the

camps used Indian words, like "Lohikan" and "Chen-A-Wanda." The owners wisely chose to

name the camps after Indians rather than after themselves, sparing us names like Camp

Krefsky and Camp Mermelstein.



My parents sent me onto the bus with a canteen and a flashlight; none of the kids was even

allowed to bring a transistor radio. We were supposed to be "roughing it." The function of

camp (other than enabling your parents to finally have sex) was to teach you how to get along

without material possessions. Nowadays, kids take so much stuff they should be met at the

camp by redcaps. The girls in my daughter's bunk have Walkmans, Discmans, Watchmans,

computers, microwaves. Their idea of roughing it is doing without speed dial.



When I was 13, I looked forward to the twice-a-week socials with the girls' camp. We

always knew when it was a social night, because we'd see the girls walk to the mess hall with

their hair rolled high in curlers and covered with rubberized shower caps that were attached

by nozzles to portable hair dryers the size of a briefcase. The air would flow in, the shower

cap would fill up, and the girl's head would look like a balloon ready to take off over the

English Channel for France. Each time I see one of those "photos" in the Star or Enquirer of a

bulb-headed alien landing on the White House lawn, I think of Camp Keeyumah girls on

social nights.



On these nights, we boys doused ourselves in Aqua Velva; Red Adair didn't use this much

spray to cap the oil fires in Kuwait. Aqua Velva is so strong that when we put it on in the

summer of 1961, Yuri Gagarin could have smelled us. What a sight we must have been, with

our Ricky Nelson spit curls and fuzzy mohair sweaters, reeking like French whores,

deliberately counting out the one-two-three of the box step as we slow-danced with the girls

                         and tried to breathe furtively into their ears the way our counselors taught us.



I told my daughter all this, and I know she was hanging on my every word, because she said:

"Could you turn on the radio?"



How about oldies, I said.



"No oldies," she said. "Oldies are for babies."



Just six months ago she loved oldies. Oldies are my music; I felt so connected to her when

she gleefully sang along with the Beach Boys.



I saw a change coming a couple of months back when my daughter started singing along with

Coolio. Coolio is a rapper whose hair is done in braids that look like the rabbit ears on a

1962 Magnavox.



"You know this song?" I asked her, incredulous.



"Yeah, it's great," she said.



I listened all the way through, and I couldn't understand much. I thought I heard somebody

rhyme "is everybody happy" with "Moammar Gadhafi." And I recalled how in "Eve of

Destruction" Barry McGuire rhymed "My blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin' " with "I'm

sitting here just contemplatin'." At the time I thought it was brilliant, and I was upset when my

father heard it and snickered.



That's how kids begin to separate from their parents -- through music. The first time I saw

Jerry Lee Lewis standing over the piano, shaking his behind and his blond hair, I knew he

was for me, and my parents could have Eddie Fisher. Coolio was her Jerry Lee. Coolio!

What would she listen to when she was my age, classic rap?



I thought of that as my daughter fiddled with the car radio, trying to find hip-hop as we drove

to the place where the bus would pick her up for camp. Eight weeks of summer would pass

until I saw her again. Did they even have socials where she was going? Did the boys still

smother themselves in cologne? 



"Is it okay if you kiss me goodbye in the car, Dad?" my daughter said with some hesitancy.

"Not right by the bus? It's not that I don't love you, it's, uh . . . "



I understand.



© Copyright 1996 The Washington Post Company