Fun Camp (5 page)

Here remind Candice it’s not her responsibility to break up the pack of Hispanic girls or to impose “a language everyone can enjoy.”

Here reward skepticism toward inoculation.

Here may we, come Sunday, require a whole day and night of recovery sleep.

Here may we honor the Lutheran couple who founded this ranch, their names irrelevant to their legacy, their breath cold on our necks.

*

Dear Mom,

Though a tactical failure, the Vietnam War really was waged with admirable intentions. Eager to hear your thoughts.

Billy

ON CONSTITUTIONALITY

The handbook is sort of ambiguous about the legality of lake pirates, Darla, though it does define them. “Lake Pirates are a brigade of scrappy nautical youngsters, traditionally from Boys Cabin 3, who scourge Lake Pawachee in their mighty canoe, tipping the boats of unsuspecting girls.” And see, here’s an ink drawing—the caption reads, “Boys being boys.” So it’s tricky. Boat-tipping is sort of an institutional Prank of the Century. I can tell you that the ferocity with which they tipped you was absolutely not personal, that Lake Pirates are often kind and flirtatious and even apologetic when landlocked. That when you explain the personal value of the necklace that’s now forever lost to lake floor, their faces will be contrite, their
hmm
s thoughtful, and their nods emphatic. They may even mean it. But make no mistake—they will tip you again. If it helps, I’ll make an announcement before free time saying the you-know-whats on a certain body of water better cut out their this-that-n-the-other, but I’m gonna be smiling while I say it. Fun Camp is pro-prank, Darla, and that’s worth more than a hundred grandma necklaces. Best thing, if you truly don’t want to get pranked, is to spend your free time under the Tree of Safety putting puzzles together with the asthmatics. But even sweeter is get some girls together and avenge that necklace.

HOW TO KNOW

Look left. Create personal meaning from that. No. Up a little. That. It informs you, doesn’t it? Child, do you think this is a coincidence? That I am pointing you towards meaning during exactly the time when you could use it? Don’t be coy—you know which thing. You’ve been waffling for ages and now it’s time to let what’s up and to the left step in and solve you. Break up with her, for instance. Quit that job. Convert to that holy mode. Keep that germinating baby you started. Bomb that. Cry for once. Decisions: Who are you to make them? You’re getting older at it, but better? Left and up knows best, and so do I, but don’t ask me to get specific. Consider this message a Do Not Reply in which any questions you have for me will be hurled into a void on the ocean floor. I will be elsewhere, escalating blissward, my own choices having been made in childhood by rays of light on this rocking chair we had.

APOLOGY + OPPORTUNITY

Tommy, Janna, I’m going to stop you right there. Now when I say the feelings you’re describing are exceptional, I mean nuke the moon. Your account of the time spent between yesterday’s kickball game and this evening when I happened upon you in each other—all I can say is wow and God bless and cherish it because for some of us, this has never happened. Have I been in love? I would hesitate and then say yes. But there is love and there is the ineffable mountain you’re scaling. To review: you two share the same favorite show, favorite movie, favorite band, favorite song, you both run track,
and
you both find camp a little immature. What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of
Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True
that you won’t let my uninformed intrusion dampen your beginnings. There’s an expression for the look you two are giving each other: Married in our Hearts. And when such looks are exchanged between two consenters age fifteen and up, the Lord winks and turns away. So too shall I. What happens next is: I’m going for a forty-minute nature walk. You will find my cabin unlocked.

THURSDAY

NO PETS

No petting. No ballpoint pens. No collared shirts in the daytime. No unearned moral clarity. No befriending townies. No slavery, including that of the puckish bet-based variety. No immediate stripping post-food fight. God, some of you, it’s like Gutter Radio is live broadcasting right into your ears, keeping you hip to the kind of life choices that mean I’m someday gonna end up buying you soup and hearing your story when I’m taking my Volvo to the collision center in the rough part of town. I was planning to put up a banner at the ranch entrance that said, “The decisions you make now will affect you later,” until a peer pointed out the lettering’s eerie resemblance to “Arbeit Macht Frei.” Speaking of frei, all camper-penned declarations of independence will be shredded unread and all participating revolutionaries are to collect trash in Friday’s first annual Shame Parade. No inter-camper secession, expulsion, exclusion, ostracization, banishment, or eviction, be it based on age, sex, cabin, clique, name, race, size, creed, shirt color, parental income, home square footage, whether or not you’ve done it, number of facial blemishes, point rating on sexiness websites, taste in music, brand of pants, sit or stand, crumple or fold, city or country, bicep circumference, calf circumference, dress size, cup size, shank length, pube count, whether your parents allow R-rated movies, humor development, past prank severity, or any other way a camper might sever the lemon of togetherness we’re attempting to incubate. More rules to come as you invent need for them.

EVERY MAN’S BATTLE

Any dudes out there hoping to do more than stand and arm-groove during tomorrow night’s After-Dinner Digestion Dance? Well Benny Hinkle’s giving a “guys only” lesson on all the witty moves that’ll have Girls Cabin 1 laughing
with
you all night long. You’ll learn such essentials as the lawnmower, the weed-whacker, the hedge-trimmer, the lasso, the Scorpion, the Sub-Zero, the cliff-jumper, the ladder-climber, the beginner robot, the saucy snake, the Eli Whitney, the beginner Thriller, the beginner moonwalk, the hairstylist, the wax on /wax off, the drop it like it’s good clean fun, the flying buttress, the limbo minus limbo stick, the motorist, the escalator, the prescribing doctor, the textin’ tween, the boy band throwback, the Carlton, the Pulp Fiction, the Romy and Michele, the six-shootin’ showdown, the “remember the Macarena?,” the “remember that dancing baby?,” the Flight of the Hummingbird, the manic-depressive, the grocery cart pusher, and the treat-jumping puppy. If there’s time, Benny will demonstrate ways one might pepper the lag between songs with Chris Tucker quotes from the Rush Hour trilogy. And I know Benny’ll go over this in his session, but pay attention to the pulse of the room. At one point during last year’s dance, I saw three guys doing the motorist mere feet from each other. Not cool, guys. Really not cool.

AL

Listen hard and you won’t even feel the shot, little lady.

“You’ll never know how to win,” people cried to the baseball team. It’s true, thought Al. We lose all the time, sixty, nothing.

“I sure would have fun as a grandmother,” replied Edith.

“I know, Mom,” Al said, “but women love winning.”

The year was 1920. Al practiced viola upstairs. He was on the 4
^th
book and getting better.

Once, on Thursday, Mandy was passing by carrying bread. She heard Al and went up. Al was abused by his father as a boy and got sad. “You don’t know me,” Mandy declared, “but play your sad song, please.” He did, and they ate the hot bread with cheese, and he looked in her deep eyes and saw that baseball was just for fun.

Because of love, does it get any better?

Al called all the team and announced he might quit for personal purposes, and they said they might disband as a group. He did, so they did.

NOT HERE TO FAKE FRIENDS

This place is in serious need of some sheep-goat separation. Is it too late in the week to switch from the Put Up with Goobers model to the Reality Elimination model? Picture it: Each night at campfire, every camper writes the name of the cabinmate he hates most. (In a tiebreaker, the counselor votes too.) The kid from each cabin with the most votes is then dramatically handed a cell phone, and must, in front of everyone, call his mom to have her come pick him up. Only after he confirms that his mom is on the way does the aborted camper get the chance to make a brief speech. Some will plead their fellow campers rethink the decision, others will lash out, others still may try to hurl their rejected bodies on the pyre. Whatever the case, we survivors are then free to tolerate and empathize with and even love the newly-dismissed peer in the light of their numbered-and-counting minutes with us, safe in the knowledge we’re the victors we’d always assumed we were, for once sure we’re surrounded by those who truly care for us and always will.

*

Dear Mom,

Last night, we dined on macaroni and cheese mashed up with beef chili. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in my whole life. What other combinations have you kept from me?

Billy

THE QUIET CABIN

All around in the post-rain everywhere, such rich material for the counselor of letters: Tetherball as metaphor for marriage, flooding lake as the unconscious, the muddy soccer field as the state of our two-party system, camper restlessness as childhood, trees as forest, leaves as trees, tried as true, muddy shoes as nature vs. nurture, grazing deer as splendorous awe, catch as catch can, town candy as contraband, the fact that my campers have informally joined other cabins as history repeating itself, in-cabin dampness as desire, the sight of Sandra running in the rain as desire, thin cotton clinging to Sandra’s chilled tan skin as desire, camp as fun, fun as camp, my exclusion as popularity contest, popularity contest as loneliness, loneliness as crippling loneliness, “as” as projection, projection as a comfort, but less and less, these days.

THE WOMAN AT THE TREE

Yesterday, Tad found me napping in my bunk and asked to borrow a water gun. I unlatched my prank trunk and showed him a good pump-action. He wanted something smaller. I said, “Covert mission, eh?” and gave him my little dollar store pistol. It holds next to nothing, it leaks, and sometimes it fails to squirt. Tad didn’t care.

He let me tag along past the cabins, past the snack shack and it’s winding, waving line, and we traded @ShitMyDadSays tweets. I figured we were headed to the pool, but Tad stopped instead at the Tree of Safety where eight pale kids worked Sudokus and Mad Libs. Tad pointed the water pistol at shy Elaine Schroeder and said, “Okay, Leni,” coining her now-ubiquitous nickname, “where do you want it?”

The dorks erupted. “You can’t, Tad! It’s the Tree of
Safety
!”

Tad held his hand out for quiet. “I come not to bring safety but danger,” Tad said. “I come not to bring exemption but inclusion.”

Leni leapt up and puffed out her chest. Tad shot once—nothing. Again—a dribble. A third time—and a gorgeous arc of water caught the light from where the leaves part and got Leni right across her—had we ever noticed before?—enormous rack. She’d never looked so good. “Check it out, Leni: You survived.” Tad said. “Now leave this place. Go have some fun. Go to the pool or something.”

When he left, the dorks plotted to tell on Tad, but Leni would take no part in their schemes. “I’ll deny everything,” she said, and left with me. And of course now she and I are going out.

FUN TREATMENT PEDAGOGIES

Threat: “Next time you waste my time like that, Peter, I’m gonna rub your face across the diving board.”

Physical: Rub Peter’s face across the diving board. Remind him of previous warning(s).

Gesture of Goodwill: “Peter, you can borrow my copy of
The Seven Habits of Highly Hilarious Campers
until you’re able to buy your own. But I expect you to read it.”

Post-Gesture Quiz: “Now Peter, if you were to rip on Richard right now, with Chapter 4 of
Seven Habits
in mind, which of his weaknesses might you isolate?” […] “Good—and what might you say about his gargantuan freak ears to drive the joke home?” […] “No, I would not call out, ‘Hey, Big-Ears, your ears are like elephant ears.’ Don’t apologize, just try again.”

Intervention: Gather all the campers whose time the unfun camper has wasted. Each reads from a letter outlining how he’s been annoyed or inconvenienced. Repeatedly assure the camper your actions are coming from a place of love (even if they aren’t).

Use of Recall: “Remember when I rubbed your face against the diving board, Peter? Next time it’ll be poison oak.”

REMEMBER TO BREATHE

What if I told you everyone at camp was secretly much happier than they looked? And if I said their happiness stemmed from the fact that they thought of you much more than you‘d expect them to? That it embarrassed them how much they thought of you? That they know, too, that you’d probably love to hear that you are remembered when you’re not around, but that they find it hard enough to talk to you as it is, the way their words fail? What if I spoke of a commanding presence and an
it
that people know when they see it? If I told you that everyone assumed that you aren’t famous only because you chose something richer for your life? If I explained that any hostility you sense in others is never anything but petty jealousy, and that in their—
our
—better moments, we’re kicking ourselves? That we’d take a bullet for you onstage at a hot summer stump speech? That it confuses our hearts the way God tells each of us that you’re the one, but that mine is the heart most confused? You might be compared to a summer’s day if you or I knew anyone who talked like that.