My Gut Reaction to Crip Camp
Watching Crip Camp was an experience. After more than 48 years of living with a physical disability, I still find it uncomfortable, startling, odd, weird . . . and amazing . . . to actually see people like myself on television. And quite literally, I don’t think I’ve ever seen us depicted as we are in this documentary. I never attended overnight camp. I have a recollection of a counselor letting go of me in a pool during day camp and, for better or worse, I never wanted to go back. So I can’t claim that watching the documentary about a New York summer camp for people with disabilities in the early 1970s brought me back to my days as a camper. I’m sure that Camp Jened would have been nothing like any camp I would have been attending anyway. I say that both with jealousy and admiration. The camp appeared to be run by young adults if not teenagers who I assume offered the necessary assistance to those who needed it, though they seemed almost like fellow campers. And that may have be