This Sunday marks the beginning of Camp Periwinkle! In the next few days 189 campers will finish packing their bags for a week of fun, exploration, friendship and all things camp! As we look forward to the 36th year of Periwinkle’s signature program, we share a camp tradition from one camper’s perspective. Enjoy this little glimpse into life at Camp Periwinkle and Make It A Splendid Week!

The Camp Periwinkle Tradition

I went fishing and kissed a fish. It’s a Camp Periwinkle tradition. If you haven’t been to camp, now you know! It felt slimy. And then it tried to bite me. I almost dropped it! To get it to calm down, I traced my hand down its back by its fin. Sometimes it calmed down; sometimes it didn’t. It flinched and moved around. Even though it was slimy and slippery, I caught it. Barely!

I almost caught a fish 26-inches long. It was big! It pulled and pulled and it yanked the bait off the hook. When we went fishing, we put bad leftovers on the hook.

Weird thing: It actually ate bad leftovers. The stuff that people barely ate. The things I didn’t get seconds on. But not the pizza. I totally got fourths and fifths of pizza! Everybody wants pizza!

I even hooked myself a little. It hurt and felt sharp! In my mind I yelled “AHHH….AHHH…AHHH!!!” But it was worth it to do fishing. It’s always worth it!

Joey, age 10

This entry is a part of our series “Make it a Splendid Week”! Follow along weekly to enjoy excerpts from The Splendid Review, an anthology of poems, short stories and autobiographies written by talented young writers engaged in the Periwinkle Arts In Medicine Program at Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers.