J. asked its readers to send in correspondence their children wrote from summer camp. We received an array of letters, ranging from informative to philosophical to downright quirky. The letters are unedited, allowing you to enjoy them in all their glory — and random capitalizations, misspellings and general lack of punctuation.

A postscript follows each letter, updating the lives of these children, since some of them breezed past childhood long ago.

Dear Mom, Dad and Andrew,

I am having a lot of fun. I am writing on the second day in the monrin. These are the people in my tent, Lara, Janet, Jennifer and Sam. We wake up at 7:00 and eat at 8:00. Last night I looked down the biffy with my flashlight. Well anyway I miss you.

Your daughter,

Lara Huberman, 8
Girl Scout Camp, 1980
Lara, 33, is a social worker completing a degree in marriage and family therapy. She and her husband, Joshua Ezrin, live in San Francisco. She reportedly no longer looks down toilets with a flashlight.

Dear fuzz, (Parents)

Hi! I’m doing just Nifty! The first few days were kind of bad, but it’s o.k. Now. R.U. Guys doing good? If your reading this then I’m very disappointed in you. You should be in Europe or something. Well, Just checkin in!

Luv Ya!

David Wittman, 13
Camp Tawonga 1987
David is now 32 years old and works as a composer in Los Angeles. Shouldn’t he be in Europe … or something?

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m okay, … It turns out I don’t have the haftarah blessing. I have the trope sheets If you can get them from the cantor then please send it.

Other than that I’m doing wonderfull The kids in my cabin like me and all of them are nice. Apparently this year was the record maker of most kids at camp newman. Is Scooter Alright? I miss scooter. My choges “activities” are Climbing at the tower and video,

Hope You write back,

Ben Parker, 12
Camp Newman 2005
On June 24, Ben will celebrate his bar mitzvah at Temple Israel in Alameda. He is still working on his Haftarah portion.

Dear Bubu,

I am at camp. I was just wondering How you are doing. Something that happened today really made me think. I even started to cry because I thought that I would be VERY sad if I ever lost you. I kown that some day I will lose you and I wish that that day will never come but that is very hard. I hope that for the rest of your life witch I hop is very long I hope you are happy so I Leave you with this Poem.

If I could take the Pane away I would. If I could take the sorrow away. If I could take the harshness of life away from you I would. Life is like a clock some times bad some times good. I hope you live the rest of your life well.

Aaron Brown, 11
Camp Swig 1995
Aaron is now 22. He will graduate later this month from San Francisco State with a degree in hospitality management. His great-grandmother Mildred Gold (Bubu) died March 26, 2000.

Dear Aunt Selma,

I am having the time of my life. Thank you soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much for sighning me up to go to camp. Thank you for the package, the magazines are so cool and I’ve already used the camera but they took the candy away.

Well we went on our hiking trip and we had to pee in the woods, isn’t that grody. Well, gotta go.

Lily Palmer, 11
Camp Tawonga 1998
Lily, 19, lives in Ventura. She goes to Ventura Junior College and works as a nanny. She still holds the camp record for number of o’s (28) in the word so.