Three Cheers for Partisanship

My most vivid memories of my early years at sleepaway camp, when I was 10 and 11, focus on the bizarre institution of color war. The campers were divided randomly in half for a wide-ranging competition between teams defined around no common identity, status, experience, or prior allegiance—just pure partisan competition. For one entire day, half of my bunkmates and possibly one or both of my brothers would become the sworn opposition. Despite knowing these divisions were both temporary and arbitrary, I engaged in the competition with the utmost seriousness—in relay races, basketball games, and whatever else was on the packed schedule.

At day’s close, two climactic showdowns involved the whole camp, each team gathered on opposite sides of a ball field. The first competition required us to shout self-congratulatory cheers; the victory was awarded to the team that impressed the judges as louder and, thus, more spirited. I would scream myself hoarse. The finale, a tug-of-war, relied less on an umpire’s subjective assessment. We lined up alongside a massive rope stretched across the field and pulled with all our collective might. I can still picture the anchor of my team during one of those summers, a stout boy with a low center of gravity from the oldest age group, wrapping himself with the far end of our rope,