"Pizza Fingers" - Summer Reflections with Ray
Fall is one of my favorite seasons, but it always leaves me with the same tiniest bit of “homesickness feeling”. I love Fall because you witness the leaves morph into beautiful shades of warm colors, coffee just seems to taste better, and I am a sucker for sweet breads that I find at the local farmers market. However, even with all of these wonderful things that remind me of my home in Rochester NY, I still find myself missing one thing.
I miss camp. I miss the hustle and bustle of each day. I miss the daily announcements, and everyone being given an excuse at any time to make a speech about anything. I miss the culinary creations that the kitchen squad worked their butts off to provide us (looking at you lasagna night!) And I miss getting the chance to build a community with kids and staff where we value autonomy, confidence, restorative practices, and creativity.
So let me put off my dreams of chocolate chip pumpkin bread for just a moment, and let me share with you one of my favorite moments of unbounded creativity from this summer. And before I tell this story, I have to give credit to one of my favorite camp idols, Ryan Russotti, for still inspiring me today to do things that are outside of the box that lead to big magic.
It’s about five days into session one, and for anyone that knows camp, you start to breathe a little easier at this point in the session. Kids start to miss home a little less, counselors start to figure out the games and systems that work for their cabins, and everyone feels a little more confident in showing their silly side. And it was on this day I was walking across the mainfield, and I saw Laura standing with a pack of campers from Blueberry 1. Without thinking about it, I ran up to Laura and interrupted whatever conversation was being had (a trait I may have gotten from my father) and proclaimed “Where are the Pizza Fingers!? Where are they?!” The kids from the cabin looked beyond confused and perplexed at my inquiry, but Laura knew exactly where to take it. She said, “Ray! Not the pizza fingers! How did we lose them again? Will we ever be able to find them?!” And at this point, the mystery was ON. The faces of the campers from Blueberry 1 went from unsure to certain that their next 5 days would revolve around a quest to locate these mystical pizza fingers.
But first I had to explain what ARE pizza fingers in the first place! So I broke it down for them, as more kids even outside of their cabin started to catch wind of our endeavors. And I explained it like this. “Have you ever eaten a mozzarella stick and thought I would love more sauce. That the sauce you dip into is just not enough to get you where you need to go? Introducing the pizza finger. Inside of this chicken finger shaped pizza creation is the cheese, the pepperoni, and most importantly: the bonus sauce. Pizza Fingers everybody. And we need to find them!”
And with that, a spontaneous and nonsensical outburst became a session-long search for the mysterious pizza fingers. Kids would ask other kids if they knew where they could find some. Staff would ask me if they actually existed! And in this creation of a camp-wide inside joke, I recognized two things.
1) Camp is the best place for connection. As I saw kids and staff spread word of the pizza fingers to other folks in the camp community, I saw so many moments of connection and inclusion that only happens at camp. With this silly idea came opportunities for kids to create shared ideas into what the fingers could be, or how they could form a party of campers to search for them during waterfront. It led to more chances for these kids to bring others into the fun they were having, a type of fun that is purely possible because of camp.
2) Being silly is important. Where else in the entire world gives kids and adults the space to let these ideas run wild. Kids find possibility and acceptance when they come to camp, and this moment was just one of hundreds I saw this summer. Whether it is putting on a costume, leading a repeat after me song, or finding the pizza fingers, the ability to create and imagine breeds confidence.
And so this story could only end in two ways. Were we unsuccessful in our efforts to find the pizza fingers, or did we find them? Fast forward to the end of the session, and we were able to locate a box that was buried deep underground. And on this box we found a recipe, a list of ingredients that could make the impossible happen. I took the box to our head chef, Nina, and I asked her if it could be done. And by lunch that day, one pizza finger emerged from the kitchen. As a camp we decided to elect some representatives to try the first pizza finger. Let me tell you, you have never heard a group of people cheer so loud for fried cheese as the campers and staff of Stomping Ground did at that moment. My only hope is next summer hundreds of pizza fingers will be made!
We found the pizza fingers!!! (Thank you Chef Neens)
And that’s what I look forward to now. As each summer passes, we will continue to grow, change, and innovate to make the next even better. That’s what we will be doing this Fall, Winter, and Spring. I hope you will join us again next year, and be a part of whatever new adventures lie ahead. We can’t wait for you to be there.
And who knows… maybe you will come up with your own “pizza finger.”
