#364: Josué, Lara, and Link discuss traditions, from singing songs at camp, to watching A Christmas Story every year. We talk about why traditions stick around-or don’t. (We didn’t talk about Fiddler on the Roof, but we all thought about it.)

Josué (00:00)
Welcome to GT Radio on the Geek Therapy Network. Here at Geek Therapy, we believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves is through the media we care about. My name is Josué Cardona and I am joined by Link Keller and Lara Taylor. Lara you’re up. What are we talking about today?

Link (00:10)
Hello?

Lara (00:12)
Hey!

I am up. I want to talk about traditions. So every year my family and I go to a YMCA family camp for Labor Day weekend. And this year and last year, some things were a little different. A lot of the traditions that had been so important to us were either not there or we had to fight to get them. And…

I think it made me appreciate when we did get to do the things like certain songs that we sing, certain programs that we run, made me appreciate those things a little more. So I wanted to talk about geeky traditions. So one of the things that I think about when I’m thinking of geeky traditions, Nina and I started watching Hamilton every 4th of July. That’s a thing that we do.

or you know my mom used to watch, we used to watch, what is it? Christmas story, every Christmas, those kinds of things. But also, I know of some other geeky traditions around here like going to Comic Con every year. And I think I’ve been missing that. And so, I don’t know, I just wanted to talk about traditions. Why we like them.

what we do when they’re not available to us, you know, and I don’t know, how we kind of pivot if we have to, or fight for things to come back. Because that’s another thing that happens in Geekdom.

Josué (02:00)
I’m curious when you talked about the family camp and how things were different this year. Did it feel like something was missing?

Lara (02:06)
Yeah, I did. I felt like, I don’t know, it felt less like community. Like we had no, there were less activities that brought everyone together to meet each other. It felt kind of bare bones. The one that really got me that we fought to get back this year was, there’s a song that we sing at the end of every campfire and have for, I think it’s like 30, 31

that a friend of mine wrote and he passed away last year. So I felt like it was really important. One of the reasons I went up to camp to volunteer last summer was to help Brink keep that tradition alive and sing the song. And so this year they weren’t gonna do it. And a bunch of our, bunch of people who had been there before were like, no, we need to sing this song, it’s really important. And so it got budged on and I got to sing the song.

and it felt really empowering to have a little bit of change and also frustrating that I had to, that I had to go through that and fight to keep something that had been around for such a long time. And was important, clearly important to a lot of people who were there.

Josué (03:22)
Yeah, yeah, for how many years was that song?

Lara (03:25)
30, like 30, 31 years, yeah. And it was written for the camp by a guy who went to the camp.

Josué (03:28)
It’s on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, maybe we can maybe that’s a part of it too of like.

Lara (03:40)
Mm-hmm.

Josué (03:43)
How quickly? Like, why would you, how does that stop being a traditional all of a sudden so quickly? Yeah.

Lara (03:44)
Hehehe

Right? Yeah. And I think part of it is sometimes there’s like at this, it almost became a thing where it wasn’t something they did last year because they had so few people who had been there before who knew the song. But I also don’t know what’s in the minds of the people running it right now. So, who knows what’s going on and the reasons behind it. All I know is we spoke up.

and we got to sing our song again. And that was really nice.

Josué (04:27)
What does it mean to you though?

Lara (04:30)
What does it mean to me?

Josué (04:31)
Yeah, like the song, like having that.

Lara (04:34)
For me, and I think this gets into what traditions mean to people, I think that this song, one, it reminds me of home. I think of camp as my home away from home. It is a thing that connects me to it. We’ve talked before on the show about how music can bring back memories. Music can… I remember the first time I sang this song 28 years ago. So…

It’s a big thing for me. And I think more so now that my friend who wrote it passed away last year, it feels like a way of connecting to him and keeping his memory alive. But in general, like traditions, there’s like a, it depends on the tradition, but a lot of them are ways to know what’s gonna happen, to have some kind of connection and tether to structure how things are gonna be.

When somebody changes up the schedule at camp, like everybody’s like, Oh no, what’s going to happen next? I don’t know. Um, I don’t know. It’s, it gets so.

It gets to the point where I’ll even outside of camp, the drive up to camp. Um, I know this road, it’s a windy road in the Santa Cruz mountains. I know the road like the back of my hand, I can drive it really fast. But now one part of it is washed out and it’s one lane. And so it takes me a lot longer because I don’t know what to expect anymore because the road has changed. Um, but those are things that we have to kind of deal with because, you know, rainstorms wash out roads.

Um, I don’t know. It’s, um, things were different this year and it didn’t, it felt good, but not good. Like there were some cool things that got added that I liked, but also like. It was a mixed, a mixed weekend, I think. And so it got me thinking about the things that I try to connect with when I’m at home, um, to kind of tie me to the things that I love.

I don’t know.

Josué (06:47)
Yeah. Traditions are comforting, right? I think, I think that’s why we go back to them over and over again. And then that’s quite an experience to have all of those different parts of this one thing that you do every year. That for the majority of 30 years, so many pieces were the same, such and so many pieces were different. Sounds, I don’t know. Was it, I don’t know. Sounds almost like unsettling in a way.

Lara (06:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, it’s interesting because they even picked this year to renumber the cabins. They renumbered the cabins. And then we always stay in the same cabin, right? Well, and they, not only did this year we get moved to a different cabin, but then also the cabin that we got moved to was the same number as the cabin that we were in before, but a different cabin. So.

Josué (07:23)
Thanks for watching!

And you always stay at the same cabin. I’m assuming every year. Yeah.

Lara (07:49)
It’s the same, yeah, it’s just everybody was kind of thrown off because uh, people will show up and they’ll, oh, we’re in cabin one. I mean, uh, 12. Um, so things kind of shaken up. It, a lot of changes, good and bad. Uh, and I think, I don’t know. I have a different perspective on like, I feel like this year has given me a little perspective on how to take those things in stride, but also fight for things because

I think some of those changes might’ve broken me in past years and I’ve been like, forget this, I don’t want to be here anymore, you know?

Josué (08:28)
I mean does it feel like those tra...