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Question of the Week: What Is Your Fondest Memory of Summer Camp?

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By Velvet Roper staff 6/15/12 1:30pm

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The most American of all traditions: sending your child away to summer camp.

This week, we asked our friends on the party circuit that had been party to their parents’ brief period of summer freedom–Tinsley Mortimer, comedian Reggie Watts, philanthropist Jean Shafiroff and a couple of Broadway’s best, to name a few–about their childhood experiences in the great outdoors. Despite the bug bites, terrible food and the seemingly inevitable murderous rampage (a la Friday the 13th), what is your fondest memory of summer camp?

Click through to the slideshow for a few of our favorite answers.
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Summer camp cabin
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Tinsley Mortimer

"I went to camp Warhead in North Carolina when I was around 12 or 13. It was a boating camp. It was fun at the time, but I remember it being unsupervised. I'd be terrified to go back there now. Freddy or Jason or someone might kill me."
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Roosevelt Credit, Broadway actor

“I’m an Eagle Scout. So I was taking my swimming test off Catalina Island. As I was swimming, I caught a snake, and it wrapped around my arm and I thought I was going to die.”
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Amy Warren, Broadway actress

“I got to go to a really awesome camp and I swam across the lake. That was a big deal. When you start going and you’re young, it’s like, ‘Oh, the older kids are going to swim across the lake.’ It’s a pretty long swim!”
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Jean Shafiroff

Of the Catholic summer camp in Long Island that she attended: "I was about 12 years old. It was nice bonding with all those other girls. I only wish there had been more boys!"
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Reggie Watts

“In the middle of the night I snuck out of my cabin during summer camp at Salmon Lake in Montana, a computer camp. I snuck down by the women’s restroom and hid in the bushes and waited until they came out of the bathroom and tried to scare them by making noises and moving the bushes. And that was a really fond memory. Most of the girls didn’t do anything. They didn’t freak out, which was really weird.”
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Scout Bassett, amputee triathlete

“It was a little bit challenging to learn how to swim without a leg. I actually went into the water, thinking, ‘Oh, no problem. This is water proof.’ But titanium doesn’t float and it gets rusty. So that was not a good idea.”