by Gabe Durham
WEDNESDAY
EARLY RISER
I worry I’ve begun to regard you with a knee-jerk irony. Each time I lock my truths away in the interest of keeping the hive humming, I forget a crucial something and Holly tells me what I can do with that smirk I’m wearing. When words fail, I ask my record to intercede. The sacrifices made, as a camper, to achieve the six-time cabin inspection award while fostering a then-rare brand of fun. The solemnity with which I took my charge as an eight-time Boys Counselor, modeling and molding as your ordinances saw fit: streakings, prankings, water balloon raids, bra-stealing bonanzas. And now, with Holly at my side, the revisions made to the handbook that reflect each promise I ever made to myself. I never loved playing Steal the Bacon with ten-pound sacks of flour. I never loved Greased Watermelon Relay. Oh Fun Camp, when did my brain invert my face? When I at last remember how to lower the edges of my mouth, it’s already bedtime.
THE CREATIVE USE OF MEAL TIME
I read a gorgeous review in the Daily Camper of yesterday’s morning scramble. Not without complaints, but there’s a bit in there about consistency—poetry. These are savory times, Grogg! This summer is sure to go down in history as the one in which Grogg learned to differentiate between pepper and cumin. As you know, Dave and I don’t like to come down hard on the kids—it’s not Discipline Camp after all. We’re more into the punishment that works its way in through the skin and coats the heart anonymously. This here is a list of all campers, for you and Puddy and Marimba to share. Beside each camper’s name is a number. 100 is 100 percent, meaning they get a full portion at dinner. A few campers have earned 110’s or even 115’s, but more important are the dips: some 90’s—those who lost the tug-o-war—some 80’s—the Cabin 2 girls who’ve been whoring their lips out to lonely tots for Canteen Bucks—and even a few 75’s—the boring, the homesick. God, they irk. I’m like: It’s a week, kids. You didn’t sign a lease. Any lower than 75 and the campers would catch on. Our portion shifts are just dynamic enough that the punished will feel guilty without understanding why. We break them down only to rebuild them in our own image—hilarious, kooky, deferential.
GIRLS STAY HERE, BOYS FOLLOW ME
For those who know what I’m about to be getting at, don’t say it and don’t do it. For those who don’t know, you will, and don’t do it when you do. You who are do’s, don’t tell the don’ts what it is, for knowledge increases temptation. Don’t tell tips or lend lotions. You don’ts, don’t ask. Don’t want to ask. Golly, this is dicey, trying to avoid inflaming the imagination. People didn’t have these problems pre-Gutenberg, but once printing got going, Olde Britain was overrun with pamphlet after pamphlet of suggestions to allegedly help a woman conceive: Don’t pull out early. Don’t move after. You might not get that holy blessing you so fervently desire if you were to stand, dress, and make your way expediently to the outhouse. Now look where we’re at: hell in a ham garden. But not you boys, right? Tidy the homes of your minds. Avoid complete dictionaries. Never agree you’re eighteen. If a do starts to tell you don’ts, leave the do. I’m a do who wants to be a don’t, but once the apple’s bit, as they say. The girls? Off with Bernadette talking menstruation. They bleed out themselves. Don’t dwell on it.
BASICS
I thought up a game where the players all die but you did too so what’s the point. But then there’s this other game called The Game You Are Playing Whether You Say So or Not where we raise our arms and shout, “We win! We win! We win!” Everybody shouting wins, but the biggest winner is the one most convinced that we win. Easy to pick up, and yet each time the game is played there are over 7 billion losers, many of whom don’t even know to feel bad for it. Which if that doesn’t piss you off now, it will. After a real close game, we tailgate awhile and head into town in the truck bed, flashing honkers, then park in the street and play teeball with the neighborhood’s decorative mailboxes. It’s not a perfect system but it carries a message. Truthfully? We wouldn’t let the locals play even if they wanted to. Any of them tried to raise an arm—buddy, they’d lose it.
FUTURE ARM-CROSSER
Question, Dave. At what age is it appropriate to stop dreaming of the year I sweep the Nobels, and really hunker down and specialize on the talent that’s gonna win me international acclaim and sex? Fourteen? Eighteen? Six? I got to tell you, nothing discourages the ambitious twelve-year-old like a bilingual Japanese fifth grader who gets onstage at skits, all humble and nervous, and busts fiery concertos out her violin like it’s nothing, or like a linguist mom who tells me that if I were to make it my life’s pursuit to learn the little fiddle prodigy’s primary language, it’s already too late for my brain to pick up on the nuances necessary for fitting in. I’m too late to dominate at something, aren’t I? If I’m too late, it’s fine, I just need to hear you say it so I can transition out of having goals and start nudging whoever’s beside me at skits and going, “Yeah, but at least I’ve got a life.” Or, wait, “Yeah, but at least I’ve got a life.” Well. Not there yet. I’ll work on it.
GROGG CORNERS A CAMPER
Concocting as to the present of outfromers in the habitat beyond, I say to you yes and surely. “If the parking lot’s spacious,” Tad Gunnick once spat, “folks’re gonna neck and do donuts.” Or to coin it in your terms, budder: You got the booze, you’re gonna cruise. But then I think of what if the beyonder folks are just real okay with how things are and don’t suspect of me and wouldn’t care if they did. That tears up my gut. Worst case happens, we hurl half of us off into the open lot of space and each slog our soils for ages, break contract, each turn the color of what we eat, forget each other, rethink, rebuff, rebuild, then invite the other us back home. We’d whistle over accents, maybe war awhile, breed. What a kick! But we hope instead for real deal outfromers, meaning what I said only way longer ago, before our cells got divorcing. Nightly I twirl behind the shack to entice outfromers in case. Quarterly I put up a sign on the roof: The Parking is Amber and Free on Weekends. And all the literals from town come neck and do donuts and prove my point.
*
Dear Mom,
I’m daring to ask a lot of big questions this week. I thought you should know.
Billy
HOLLY’S LAMENT
I have always been baffled by words—how people hold you to things you’ve said just because you said them. “Wheelchair Accessible,” for example, is nothing but a beautiful, meaningless expression until it is suddenly, unexpectedly a promise.
OH. THAT?
It’s a smell you’ll learn to anticipate. In fact, a seasoned camper can gage what day of the week it is based on how badly her eyes tear up when she’s passing Boys Cabin 4. These lads, just on the cusp of caring that they reek, will for now resist any calls to sanitation in the hope that hygiene is just another inane adult imposition like sugar limits and seatbelts. Mind you, these are the same boys who by next year will have overdone it in the opposite direction: unnecessary daily shaving and aftershaving, showering before and after anything, sniffing at each other’s deodorants in quest of the one that really gets it done, dousing cologne, checking their pits when they think no one’s looking, and balking at any activity that threatens their crisp pointy hair. A phase no less annoying than the one they’re in now, but far easier to ignore. Since it’s Wednesday, the boys still feel like their stink is some great secret they’re getting away with, but give them a couple of days. They’ll grim up and bathe once their mold colds kick in.
ONE CAMPER PER DECK CHAIR
One deck chair per camper. No running around the pool except during barefoot poolside relays. Don’t rub your eyes when you get chlorine burn. All swimmers must first pass the Deep End Test, which is ten questions, true or false, regarding the history of the deep end. During Sharks n’ Minnows, no actual biting. During Marco Polo, no not saying “Polo.” Don’t call staff over to watch your synchronized swimming routine unless you’re really gonna nail it. Splashing encouraged. Mild dunking encouraged. No more than three people on
the water slide ladder at a given time. Be super-careful when stand-sliding down the water slide. One handy tip: Pool water doesn’t quench like you’d hope. No swimming for thirty minutes after the midwives of the nearby townie birthing center commandeer the pool. No ogling the lifeguards too obviously. Swim trunks should rest one half-inch below the bellybutton at all times. No two-piece, flesh tone, neon, or writing-on-the-butt swimsuits. No boys showing girls which way the gym is. It’s confusing and hurtful—there is no gym. Same-sex pantsing only, please. That rule always gets some groans, but thank your stars you’re even allowed in the same pool with each other. It wasn’t so long ago the elders on our abstinence committee called coed swim “mixed bathing,” a term so imbued with erotic stigma, boys used to mess themselves at the sight of a deep end.
TAKE IT FROM A VET
I’m glad at least you’re having fun. Two years ago camp was mild weather always, singing nonstop and everybody so into it, funner games, better food, better theme, cuter boys, more impactful lessons, older kids you could tell were considered cool at school, extremer pranks. This girl Maggie Reed bled so hard when the pail of milk they rigged up to fall on her head didn’t tip like it was supposed to. Twenty stitches. So far this year, we’ve seen only the kind of injuries healed with a wash, a kiss, and a band-aid, or if there’ve been good spills I’ve missed them. I swear even the outside smelled fresher two years ago. In a way, it’s got to be easier for you, not having been here for Fun Camp’s good years. How does one explain the savory tang of a ripe strawberry to the girl with no taste buds? But even you must vaguely discern the “late to the party” flavor of last night’s freezer-burned fish sticks. Best for us to just pass free time here on the porch, tan, snack, call out slurs to the phonies strolling by, and let this dismal excuse for an off-year blow over.
DANGEROUS APPROXIMATIONS OF HILARITY
Most popular among the means with which unfun campers will attempt to disrupt norming is a complex of behavior we call Fun Camper Caricaturing, in which the child exaggerates overtly the conduct traditionally associated with joviality. The camper may, for instance, try to emulate the wacky behavior of various film and television personalities, which would normally be advisable. However, the child in question has often been cursed with aged or otherwise out of touch parents who don’t provide or permit windows into contemporary culture, and thus, the child’s attempts at levity rarely amount to more than googly-eyed Rodney Dangerfield jokes, or, in extreme cases, Three Stooges routines in which the child plays all three stooges. In his efforts to appear hilarious, the boring child says, “You see how typically fun I am. My behavior is appropriate for my age, and I am not without humor. Hence, you need not correct me.” In such cases, the unlearning of the parents’ harmful comedic influence is often much more time-and-attention-consuming for concerned counselors than is filling the campers’ brains with the prevalent edgy and ethnic comic routines of the day.
ARMISTICE
What if there was just one hour of free time in the exact middle of the week when you gave us our phones back? We pop on, read our texts, take some pictures, watch a couple videos, check the weather, and see what’s up with the rest of the world. I can’t tell you how many times, today alone, I’ve felt the sweet new text buzz on my thigh and reached for my pocket, only to remember where I am, and that my every camp conversation is one of those out-loud person-to-person type deals, unrecorded and liable to be forgotten forever. That when a joke is made, there’s an expectation that I literally laugh my ass off—hard to fake, and harder still to watch as others pull off convincingly. The world’s marching on without us, Holly. Human Interest article-writers have proven Fear of Missing Out to be a real diagnosable pandemic: a big collective struggle in the long run but easily satisfied in the short.
WARM FUZZY
Hey Scotty. Just wanted to send you a warm fuzzy to say hey and I’ve enjoyed getting to know you the last couple days and I think you’re a pretty cool guy and I thought you would like to get a warm fuzzy in case you haven’t been getting many. It seems like you might not be getting many. And that’s sad. So don’t get the wrong idea—I’m not being flirtatious. Sometimes guys who don’t get a lot of warm fuzzies read too much into the warm fuzzies they do get, hearing what they want to hear instead of what’s there, taking a girl’s general sweetness for more than it is, and these boys end up telling the girls things they can’t take back and ruining nice friendships. Truth is, half your cabinmates are about to get warm fuzzies from me, including the three guys I’m actually interested in. Speaking of: Could you reply with a list of the guys in your cabin who already have dates to the Midnight Hike? You help me, I help you. Any girl you got your eye on, you let me know and we’ll see if we can matchmake some magic. Your way-too-baggy t-shirts say funny things on them, Scotty, and certain girls respond to that. xoxo, Becca
LAURA WINSLOW AND THE BAFFLING SINCERITY
Weird thing happened yesterday after the Family Matters skit. What? What do you mean, “What Family Matters skit?” The skit my cabin did. You missed it? Where were—no, never mind, never mind, don’t even speak her name. So the Cliff’s Notes: The Winslows are planning a Mormonesque family fun night and Laura—played by me—asks Carl if she can instead go to this party a cute boy invited her to, and Carl—played by Brian with a pillow in his shirt—gets pissed at the mere suggestion and puts his foot down: Laura’s not going to that party. I yell back, “I’m a grown woman, daddy! I’m a grown woman!” Just then Maxine honks the horn to pick me up and I run out of the house and go to the party. But when we get there—new scene—everybody’s just sloppy drunk, including the “cute guy” played by hairy Derek. He hits on me, calls me “hot legs”—funny cause we’re dudes—and I slap him and run all the way home and apologize to Carl and we hug and I say my wrap-it-all-up line, “I guess what I learned is that family really does matter,” and boom—end of skit. But you know that kid Randall? Chip on his shoulder? Wears a wife-beater everywhere? He comes up to me after the skit misty-eyed and says that his family’s been through a lot lately—brother’s in jail for gang stuff—and he wants me to know that the message of our skit really spoke to him. I’m like, whaaa? I almost said, “Look dude, the cabin was looking for an excuse to stuff pillows in our shirts and act drunk,” but I thanked him and gave a thumbs-up, terrified he was about to hug me.
INVOCATION
Here light the delusions of the coddled.
Here may we better utilize the tetherball court.
Here may campers refrain from saying “punk” when they mean “prank.”
Here may we grant merit to the long-dead’s shruggy explanations for the sun’s once-mysterious patterns.
Here sufficiently distract this summer’s parade of closet pyros.
Here prove nature’s got its moments.
Here honor scrapes as proof of joie de vivre.
Here persuade Deb not to unjustly inflate egos at the craft hut.
Here urge Grant and Kyle to make sure the unwary volunteer they pick from the audience during the Ugliest Man in the World skit isn’t actually one of the ugly kids.
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, tippin
g 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 hmms 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.