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.