"She lost the color war" - what does this mean?

Nightwatch_Trailer · September 2, 2004, 5:36pm

I’m reading Joseph Heller’s Something Happened (it’s pretty mediocre. I can’t really recommend it). At one point, a bit more than halfway through, the narrator’s daughter is enrolled in a summer camp and she begs her father to bring her home because she says she’s miserable; however, when the father visits the camp and asks her if she wants to go home with him, she refuses.

Something Happened:

When we got there, though, she seemed all right and genuinely glad we had come. She behaved as though she had missed us, which was a thing that had not occurred to me and which she had not once, I’m sure, put in her letters. Under an elm tree, where no one else could hear us, I asked her point-blank if she wanted me to take her back with us. […] She said no and seemed to have many smiling friends and sang the camp songs lustily along with the rest of them. She lost the color war. Later, she was to charge that I had bullied her into saying no, and I imagined I saw tears in her eyes and felt a lump in her throat as we drove off for the rest of the summer and she stood at the roadside staring after us with a somber, unmoving face, refusing stolidly to wave good-bye.

Bolding mine; the rest included for context.

So what does the phrase “lost the color war” mean? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before. The book was written in the 60s, if that helps.

RealityChuck · September 2, 2004, 6:02pm

It’s an traditional summer camp competition. Kids in the camps were organized into teams by color and competed in various ways. Sometimes it was Olympic-style events; others were pretend “war games” like Capture the Flag. The team with the best record won.

Evidently, they’re still being used.

Nightwatch_Trailer · September 2, 2004, 6:37pm

:smack: I thought it was some deep statement about the way her life was going. :rolleyes:

Thanks, Reality.

Meeko · September 3, 2004, 3:04pm

I followed the tyler hill link. **8,000 DOLLARS for 3 MONTHS? ** :eek: What is going on here? Thats a little pricey for me. Perhaps if they didnt invite Tobey Maguire(SP) and Clay Aiken…

Captain_Lance_Murdoch · September 3, 2004, 6:32pm

This was all displayed in the gripping 1985 made-for-TV movie Poison Ivy starring Michael J. Fox.

DMC · September 3, 2004, 6:38pm

Yes, but they learn levitation, which I bet isn’t taught at just any camp, and we’re not talking about that “stand on your tiptoe at just the right angle” variety. These kids float!

RealityChuck · September 3, 2004, 7:06pm

For eight thousand bucks, they’d better!

Meeko · September 4, 2004, 12:51am

I had to re-click that to get your meaning. Ok, so I wasn’t out of line with that. I was thinking I was deprived as a child or something. No, 8 Thousand bucks is still 8,000 bucks no matter what.

Give me 8,000 bucks, I will pocket half of it, and give your kid the best 90 days of his or her life with the other 4,000. “…and this kids is Las Vegas…” :eek:

friedo · September 4, 2004, 5:00am

Color War was the funnest part of summer camp. Every summer on a surprise date, all the kids in the camp would be divided into two teams: blue and white. Then we would compete in all sorts of athletic and artistic events. My favorite was the Rope Burn, in which two ropes were suspended horizontally about 20 feet up in the air, and each team had to build a bigass bonfire. The team that built their fire the fastest and burned through their rope first won.

There was also the Apache Relay, which was a relay race comprising a couple hundred different events. Like, take a canoe from here to there, then the next guy swims back, then the next guy saws a piece of wood in half, then the next guy dribbles a soccer ball a certain distance, etc.

Man, that was fun. I miss camp.