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Weird. My cable box just went haywire and now the DVR list has folders for each series. Usually when my DVR goes wonky I lose shows, not gain features.
Makes me nervous.
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So due to a variety of circumstances—the main one being an inopportune power outage—I missed the finale of So You Think You Can Dance. And it took a bit but I finally tracked it down and watched it. And I must say it was worth the effort.
And when I went to look something or other up online I noticed that it is (so says Google) 90 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment. I actually wrote a few papers on Elizabeth Cady Stanton back in college, which is neither here nor there. Although one of them got me accused of plagiarism.
For which I was acquitted, thank you very much.
But the first thing I thought of was from a history class.
Back in high school all my friends (well, a lot of my friends) were in a different program than I was, so they were all placed in advanced classes. I, on the other hand, was not. So I took the standard classes for each grade.
Except math, strangely. My worst subject. That was a bit of a humdinger.
Anyway, there were a handful of kids in the same boat as me. And we didn’t necessarily sit together, but I think there was like this unspoken understanding of kinship between us. I actually had conversations with them in later years and they would mention that exact thing, so it wasn’t my feverish imagination.
And there was one kid who we all assumed was part of this club, because he seemed relatively smart. But there we were in history class one day and he and his friends would not stop talking. This kid in particular would not shut up. And he was really cocky about it, like he was too good to be in that class and didn’t have to listen to anyone.
After some time, the teacher told him if he wanted to talk so badly maybe he should give the lecture. More eye rolling. Finally the teacher said, “Okay. If you’re so smart why don’t you explain to the class what suffrage is.”
This kid looked him square in the eye and in the most condescending voice he could possibly muster he said, “Duh. It’s about women. Suffering.”
He got kicked out of our club.
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So in the past week I’ve been counting all the signs that fall is nearing. I do like me some fall so I can’t complain too much, but it’s the bit right past that I have trouble with.
Anyway summer camp keeps popping up. First a new series about a weight loss boarding camp, but then on Friday I was working at a local church and as I was leaving two busloads of kids arrived home from summer camp. It took me back to my own experience with that whole vacation genre. For several summers I found myself at a two-week overnight camp someplace in Northern Minnesota.
Didn’t go so well. Even as a kid I had this thing about being able to sleep in my own bed. Take that away and stick me in an open-sided tent with mosquito netting and it’s just a recipe for whininess. Any aspects I enjoyed were dwarfed by the lack of indoor plumbing.
The last year I went to the camp I remember not wanting to go at all. But my mom promised that if I was really unhappy I could go home halfway through. Which I tried to do but the camp director (who at some point decided he hated me) refused to let me go home. And so did my mom.
A few days after my failed escape attempt, I woke up in my open-sided, mosquito-infested tent and didn’t feel so hot. I told my counselors, who accused me of faking it to get out of chores. They told me to get up and do chores or I couldn’t eat breakfast. I got up. I did chores.
Now every day before breakfast we would all circle up in the center of the camp to raise the flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance and read general announcements.
On that day, halfway through the Pledge I started feeling rather warm and was seeing blobs of bright colors. I remember thinking, “Cool”. And then “Well this can’t be—”.
I woke up 30 seconds later, dazed, flat on my back, and looking up at a circle of faces that were looking down at me. First and last time I ever fainted. If I’m only going to do it once, I can’t get much more dramatic than that.
I wound up in the infirmary that morning and had a variety of visitors: the camp director, who acted like I had orchestrated the whole incident; my counselors, who felt so guilty for not believing me that they were extra nice and made me cards; and of course other campers. The camp nurse, meanwhile, gave me aspirin.
Ironically enough that night I went home and got to sleep in my own bed while I went to some doctor’s appointments. I had to go back and finish the rest of the week, but my mandatory vacation made the time go a lot faster. And that was the end of my summer camp adventures.