GROGG CORNERS A CAMPER
Peek here, progeny. You got slacks to tell me I can’t strafe into my own square yardage with a rage-gage sport-slick auto-rotation twelve-forty and pluck me up something for the spit? I respect you’re unalert to the factuals. Fair as fare, sure — you’re up in your tusk spire, not knowing how my days roll out, thinking up muck to hock. It get cold up there, Senator? There’s an honor in my twelve you don’t cohere. A subset of somesuch would be lucky to go out with permanence by means of my craft. If I’m a monkey — and there’s exhibits to the situals — then at some point the critters of this greenscape globe ought to learn themselves some avoidance procession. What we cannot abide is weakness by and by. Critters. Heh, heh. “Ooh, look at me. So mystic in my fur. Think I’ll prostate myself in this smoothie-black road and see what shakes.” Well what you won’t do is pass on no dumbslick spunk, Thumper. And so the cyclone ongoes.
CAMPFIRES: AN UNPROMPTED HISTORY
These days we’ll do a “Pirate’s Cove” theme one year, “Adventure Inland” the next, then something controversial like “A Week at the Movies” before returning to “Pirate’s Cove,” but there was a time when Indians were the theme, the pull, the selling point of every camp in the nation. Boys slept in teepees and arrowed straw buffalos. Each camp had a brave to call its own, right there on the front of the pamphlet. Solemn full-headdress Indian was more fun, plainclothes nature survivalist Indian had more dignity. Later, due to the rightful concerns of the Moms, natives were replaced by safe whites in redface who’d hung around the real thing for a long weekend, taking notes. My own Pap used to polish his face up burnt orange then monotone to the kids about the tribal councils, the first Thanksgiving, headdress color combos, names that’re almost sentences, swinging from trees to cover tracks when pursued, and of nightly meetings at the burning council ring. Some bits were of disputed authenticity, like the ole hand over mouth “wa-wa-wa,” but it was loud and felt great to do. Great enough that everybody felt their racism shedding, letting themselves think of Indians as this far off dodo dream. But then the soldiers killed Hitler, came on home, squinted at how their boys got funny, and we soon cut the teepees and resident redman from the prop roster. We scrubbed the campfires white and used them for their hypnotic potential, for singing Eagles hits, for life-changing emotional appeals, for tales of hook-handed lady-scrapers. They were too pretty to discontinue, too much fun, and budding girls looked too good in their light.
ICE-BREAKER
So I say the situation then you each say what you’d do. You’re flummoxed in a locked zoo at night, in boots and a knit cap but otherwise bare, there’s been a drought, you and she have just this evening had a tough talk after which it’s clear that you’re the one who loves her more. Sleep eludes you, it’s a leap year, the baby test came back “baby,” the zoo’s owner is a registered sex offender and he’s told you more about it than law demands, money is thankfully not an issue, the cages have all been opened, the electric fences have been down since the storm, you had a reasonably happy childhood, and you’re allowed to pick two of the following: a flashlight, a mirror, self-assurance, compassion, a full moon, a phone call, a decoy, a harpoon, passable French, a walkman, batteries, a map, and a clue. The first part of my question isn’t a question: I’m so sorry to have put you in this position. The second part of my question, on the condition that you are man enough to let her go: I will love the child as if it were my own.
QUESTION
I feel like we’re missing some campers. Are we missing some campers?
MY FACE HURTS
It’s so hard to command emotions, Fun Camp! It just is. But we believe, don’t we, that commanding the good ones, like, “I’m having a smiling time in the managed danger of this hot field,” is a shot at actually feeling happy and that commanding the bad ones, like, “I’m hungry,” or “Trees suck,” or “Fire in the building!” is a shot at nothing at all? Unless it’s Oscar season? Put another way: Is fake it ‘til you make it just for job interviews, or for when flossing too? Or still another: Which would win the genuine face pageant: The “everything is good and ends badly” face? The “not getting as much sleep as I’d prefer” face that’s so popular around here? Or is it the one that implies, as the young pop star once declared at the receipt of her own Commander of Bad Feelings award, that this world is bullshit? God, I hope not. How embarrassing for the friendly and what a coup for the sultry. My closest approximation of sultry is pouty, and I never think I’m being pouty when I’m being pouty. How Holly reminds me I’m being pouty is by telling me it’s important to try and enjoy this. This being anything, whatever’s in front of us.
PATTERN I NOTICED
At a belief club meeting, a newcomer asks a question so elemental that the members laugh, delighted, having forgotten it could be asked. The newcomer squirms and the members are quick to apologize. They applaud her marksmanship, her rigor. Then they secure a time for the next week’s meeting. They’re not trying to dodge the question. They think they’ve answered it.
QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT BEFORE LUNCH
A word to the cultists — yes, you in your robes, the boys who cried apocalypse: We’re pulling the plug. It’s a little solipsistic to have witnessed a few distant mushroom-like smoke clouds and assume a wrecked world, parents all dead, and that God has chosen the innocents of Fun Camp for a new Eden. All you tittering fence-sitters: Think it’s an accident this new one true faith came from Boys Cabin 1? Continuation of the species is man’s oldest pickup line. I’m sure the gophers you blood-sacrificed would be real happy to learn their deaths are wrapped up in the wet dreams of some teenage would-be Christs. Speaking of, Jason, you’re paying for that tablecloth you’re wearing, and Tad, whose 501s did you massacre to make that Jesus sash? You look like runner-up in a West Virginia beauty pageant. Who’s booing? Hey — who was just booing? Any more of you want to make a midnight raid on the iPhone closet, you’ll find I’ve moved the phones to an undisclosed site and the batteries to the vault under the snack shack. Nature-knowing is about avoidance and you’re all too wrecked to get there alone. You’ve got fifty-one weeks out of the year to check your scores and count your dead. Surrender this one to fun.
BEAN PEOPLE
Today we make bean people. We’ll each glue six to ten beans to a sheet of construction paper — light-colored is best, blue or gray or yellow, so the beans look like they’re three-dimensional, which they are. Then we’re going to paint faces on the beans, different expressions but especially smiling, and draw legs and arms on the paper around the beans. Hands and feet too if you like. Shirts and ties and jobs and bills, fill out the lives of your bean people with the richness of your imaginations. You can make them into fish, cats, dogs, birds, bugs, whatever. You can make them skate, ski, crawl, fly, any G-rated thing at all, just by drawing what their limbs are doing. But before we begin, let’s pass the big sack of beans around, careful not to spill, and each take a turn reaching a hand in deep. Aren’t the beans cool and smooth? They almost feel wet, don’t they? This is one of those shortcuts to pleasure, kids, sticking your hand deep in some beans. We don’t ask why it’s so good, we just be thankful.