Not a Happy Camper

                                 

Well, it's that time of year again!  Time for Summer Camp.  The two most hated and dreaded words I could hear as a nine year old.  I can't tell you how homesick and miserable I was.  The time dragged, the activities were never-ending,  the food indescribable (and indistinguishable.)

I cleaned latrines.  I didn't even know what a latrine was until my arrival at camp.  I cleaned firepits.  Why does an outdoor firepit need cleaning?  I served the other kids at meals.  They called us hoppers to make it sound like it would be fun.  It wasn't.  We learned songs that I still can't get out of my head to this day.   My favorite was "Just plant a watermelon on the top of my grave and let the juice run through".  I am not making this up.

We took swimming lessons first thing in the morning in the coldest lake this side of a glacier.  We would get out with our teeth chattering and go straight to rowing class.  I was so bad they never actually allowed me to handle the oars.  I had to use my imagination and pretend I was feathering the oar.  I never learned to do it, but I remember what it was called.

This is me except without the oars.

I wrote so many letters to my parents, I could have published a book.  Of course, how many times can one read over and over,  "Please come get me.  I'm not going to make it!  P.S. Please send clean socks."

Finally, the big day came.  Pick-up Day!   I had forgotten what my parents looked  like.  Would they remember me?  What had I done to deserve this interminable sentence?  I saw them walking up the dirt path when they still appeared as dots.   I ran with arms out-stretched sobbing with pure joy!  As I ran closer,  I saw a horrified look on my 11 year old brother Ned's face.  That's when I realized everyone in the camp was watching me.  My brother swore that I had staged the whole thing just to mortify him.   I didn't care.  Do prisoners get embarrassed when they greet their families upon release from jail?  Do soldiers get embarrassed when they first greet their families after years in a POW camp?

Ned did not understand.


                        THESE WERE THE WORST 2 WEEKS OF MY LIFE!

Spring Chicken

Spring is here!  (At least in the Southeast.)  The smell of hyacinth  flowers always reminds me of Nana and Pop Sherry because we used to go visit them  every Easter.

 What I loved most about Easter was shopping for my Easter outfit. Everything new head to toe.  New hat, dress, gloves, lace trimmed ankle socks, patent leather shoes, and of course, I had to have a  new purse.  I never carried anything in it, but I had to have it.

Notice Ned's foot in a cast.  That's a story for another day.

Every Easter, the Easter Bunny would hide our candy-filled baskets and we'd have to find them.  (If you wonder why we didn't dye Easter eggs and hide them, reread my blog entry about Christmas and my dad's attitude towards holidays.)

One year, possibly after receiving our dental bills, my parents thought instead of candy the Easter Bunny would give us 3 baby chicks dyed in bright Easter colors!?!  Maybe they thought they'd produce colored eggs and we would stop pestering them to dye eggs.  We named them Napoleon, Illya, and Mr. Waverly, characters in our  favorite TV show, Man From U.N.C.L.E.

"Why did we name them after  TV spys?" you ask.  I have no idea.  I also have no idea why anyone thought it was a good idea to dye live chicks and sell them and give them to small children.

Of course, we thought they were great.  We took turns picking them up and putting them down. (Which is all you can really do with baby chicks.)  That is until my very young brother Jim decided to give Illya a hug.  It may have been Napoleon… either my memory has faded or I was so traumatized by what happened next I have tried to erase all memory of it.
When Jim put the little blue chick back in its box (home) it fell over with its neck dangling.  I am surprised the other two chicks didn't drop dead of fright from the screams that followed, not only from us five kids, but also from Dad and Mom.

We never saw Mr. Waverly or Napoleon again.  My dad whisked them and their box into the car, drove straight to the Nichios' house, (the closest farmhouse around), and told us they had a much happier home there.

We were perfectly fine with that until about a year later when my sister, Renee, asked her classmate Tommy Nichio how Mr. Waverly and Napolean were and he answered, "Delicious!"