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From earlier today:

The first time I went to camp at age 10, I came home with a sore stomach, a mouth full of canker sores, and a pronounced limp from favouring a broken toe.

How I got to that point really isn’t important.

What matters is that I wanted to go back.

All I really remembered from the week was how much fun I’d had, how many new things I’d tried, and how exciting it was to be away from home experiencing things that I could only tell my parents about later.

After I took a very long nap, that is.

My counselor probably remembers it differently… carrying me across the field in the middle of the night to get my foot looked at by a very groggy woman with a fridge full of ice packs.

My fellow cabin mates probably remember it differently… how all I ate was ice cream and gingerale for four days straight, and how I cried at the horrible pain of trying to eat a salt and vinegar potato chip with a mouth full of tiny, raw wounds.

But I’d also learned to windsurf! I’d also seen the cutest boy in the universe! I’d also shot arrows into a giant foam target, and nearly into the back of my instructor! I’d made a necklace! I’d been in a skit!

Completely awesome. Even though I still have a scar on my instep to this day.

The moral of the story is this: no matter how beat up I get by life, if things seem to have gone well in the final analysis, I’m okay with a few bumps and bruises sustained in the process. Or fractures. Or giant lacerations.

It seems like a fair price to pay for a bunch of good memories, right?

Right?

No, I know not everyone feels that way. Some people equate pain with disappointment and failure. If you break your leg, the ski vacation was a bust. If you get pinkeye, camping was lame. If you get stung by a jellyfish, you probably won’t feel like surfing again.

But not me. Bring it. It’s just another story to tell.

In the past couple of days, I’ve either connected online or in person with two of the girls that were in my cabin that first year: I saw my cousin Crista at my grandfather’s funeral, and my friend Linda found me on Facebook.

It’s amazing to see what we’re up to now, how we’ve evolved, how our lives have gone, how we evolved from 11 year-olds who screamed at spiders in the shower to the women we are in 2007.

I suppose I still scream at spiders in the shower.

But when I gave Crista a hug on that exhausting day, all I could think was, “Man. It would be nice to be a kid again, and not to know everything that was going to come after… even just for a few minutes.”

That’s not to say that I don’t honour all my scars, all my moments, all my ups and downs since then.

That’s not to say I would give up all the stories in the meantime, all the things that make me… well, me.

That’s not to say that I don’t know it’s been a good run, all things considered.

I just get to the point sometimes where I remember the things that caused me pain a little more than I remember the things that brought me joy. Only sometimes.

I’ll get past it.

You can’t go back, anyway.

But if that skinny-legged girl with the ponytail and the yellow t-shirt and the single crutch knew where her life was going to take her in the next twenty years, I’m willing to bet she’d have taken a slightly longer nap.