Welcome to the Cullowhee School for Shenanigans and Nerdery

The Cullowhee Experience (TCE) was a camp I attended for four weeks each summer in 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988. It's a lot more than that to many people including myself, but I think the most important impact it had on me is what eventually allowed me to walk away.

You're a Wizard, Harry

Imagine you are in the fifth grade. You might be a little awkward and feel different from the people who surround you in your life. One day someone comes to you, somewhat out of the blue, and tells you that you are different and special and that there is a special place you can go to be with other children like you. There is a reason why this sounds like the opening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I believe part of the reason the Harry Potter series was successful with children and adults alike was not because of the wizards but because of the muggles. There have been many successful stories that took place entirely in a fantasy universe, but at the end of the day the kids at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were just kids going to boarding school. They took went to class and took tests, had teachers they liked and didn't like, had crushes and dated, got in arguments and fights and made back up, and had cliques. It was "My So-Called Life" with magic and an underlying story of good vs. evil (so maybe "My So-Called Life" mixed with "Homeland"). Harry Potter is a world-wide phenomenon because we could all relate.

Those of us who attended TCE could relate in spades. You see, TCE wasn't just a camp. TCE was "a summer program for academically gifted students". Just like the wizards and witches in the HP series, we came from varying backgrounds - some of us had "muggle" families and some came from a long line of "gifties" (as we were called) with siblings blazing the trail before them and intellectual parents an of course the full spectrum between. The one thing we had in common during those 4 weeks a year the same thing that made us different for the other 48 and we could never turn it off.

Unlike Harry Potter, I knew I was "gifted". After moving from suburban St. Louis to suburban Orlando in 3rd grade, I was brought into a room where I was asked to perform a series of tasks. I remember that they were really easy and so I did them as fast as I could. I particularly remember one where you had cube blocks that were black on one half and white on the other with a diagonal cutting across 2 sides. You were given a series of patterns on paper and had to duplicate them with the blocks. I'll probably talk about this task in a later post because I believe it is very significant, but for now let's just move on. I guess I did pretty well because they moved me to a different class and one day a week I got to go to "gifted" which meant I spent all day doing logic puzzles, building a futuristic society out of styrofoam, playing chess, you know - typical third grade stuff.

During my fifth grade year was when I had my Hagrid moment. One of my fellow students and I were the only two from this class of gifted kids selected to go to Cullowhee. I have no idea how we were picked but I have a theory. He was awkward even among fellow "gifties" and I was more vocal and outgoing (although probably vocal to excess in the classroom). Some of my TCE peers believe TCE targeted kids who were "at risk". I get that and I definitely saw those kids there, but I also don't think you can fill a class with at-risk kids without some others to support them and pull them out of their shell. Maybe I was at-risk and never knew it, but I think this was a yin an yang situation. Regardless, I can't say that my selection was a trivial experience. There weren't a lot of us in the gifted class and being one of only two people chosen from a pool that was already in the top 2% was an honor even for a fifth grader.

I wish I remembered more about my time at Cullowhee. I remember spending a lot of time on school buses on the weekends. I remember "Sliding Rock" being nowhere near as fun as the pictures made it look. I think one girl got stitches or at least was bleeding pretty badly. One thing I clearly remember was holding hands with a girl I had a crush on all the way down the river while tubing at Deep Creek in Bryson City during my first year. Mostly I remember loving everything about it. TCE was on the campus of Western Carolina University so counselors were college students and we had the run of the mostly-empty campus at that time of the summer. We had more than enough rules to keep us safe but more than enough leeway to let us feel like the little adults we fancied ourselves as. Cullowhee was the first place I ever danced (fast or slow), where I had my first kiss, where I first experimented with drugs (relax Mom, it was just caffeine), and where I first felt that I could be myself (mostly).

In the coming posts, I plan on recounting my time at TCE and exactly what it means to me. Before, I do I want to share one important lesson I learned. I learned to walk away. You see your 10th grade year at Cullowhee is special. At the end of the summer there was a talent show and the 10th grade class always had a chance to say goodbye in a way that was always touching and emotional no matter how cool you thought you had become in the previous four weeks. I missed that. I chose something else - time with family and specifically my brother and dad at Philmont Boy Scout Ranch in New Mexico. It was a tough decision. I was afraid that I not only had abandoned my Cullowhee friends, but that I would be forgotten by them. I wouldn't be standing arm-in-arm with them saying goodbye so I would become just some guy that was there for a few years. A "what ever happened to" guy. Even with all that, I could walk away because TCE had already done its job. I had already become the person TCE made me. And because of that, no matter how much I still wanted it, I no longer needed it.