INTO THE WOODS
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
There are “happy campers” in my family.
Coco did five years at JCC sleepaway camp, and has the T-shirts prove it. Gus has overnight-camped at least sixty days of her eight short years, and she’d still be there if she weren’t trapped in a nuclear family. My husband Eric was voted Camper of the Week at YMCA Basketball Camp. They have no complaints.
I, of course, do. I went to camp twice, achieved nothing, and have been forgotten by both sets of fellow campers.
Age 11, Svetlova Dance Center, Summer 1969, Green Mountains, Vermont.
This camp was actually a run-down mansion crammed with 95 adolescent girls in leg warmers; Madam Svetlova was a fraud with a fake Russian accent; the male instructors were there to provide a Rocky-Horror-like touch of bisexual lechery. All that plus inadequate plumbing! Rather than perfect my entrechats and big jazz hands, I learned how to make chocolate pudding out of hot cocoa packets. One month later, I was the chubbiest ballerina on the grounds, and soon after that I was no kind of ballerina at all.
Age 48, Carmichael Training Systems Women’s Cycling Skills Camp, October 2006, Asheville, North Carolina.
This camp, founded by Lance’s legendary coach, is where you go to become the best road biker you can be. It works, and I’ll explain how in a future issue of Bicycling magazine. That’s right—the cycling was excellent. So whyyyyyyyy was everyone so meeeaaaan to me? Huhhhhh? They didn’t pass notes about me or stuff my cleats with silly string, but they had these cliques and they all went out on dates together and, hint though I hinted, I ended up alone, eating a moody “tofu-que” at a hippy grocery store. Once, just once, I engineered a beer with three other women, but that didn’t make me one of the cool kids, especially after I invited them to gossip about another camper who turned out to be everybody’s Brand New Best Friend. To fill in the ensuing silence, I mentioned (or implied) that I was a famous writer, but I didn’t expect anyone to believe me or look up my Amazon ratings. I then butted into a conversation about “Little Miss Sunshine” and began ranting about how it was not just a comedy, but a tragedy. This little cocktail interlude was followed by dinner, which I just know they ate without me, because there I was at the Hot Tofu Bar again.
What message can we take away from all this?
I’ll never be popular. Shut up, Mom! You don’t know anything!