Part I of my WYSIWYG Reading
Here's the first part of what I read on Tuesday. I'm still cleaning up the last part since I finished it in a rush to actually get to PS 122 on time.
In Albert Camus’ novel “The Plague,” a quiet town finds itself suddenly transformed by a rapid and deadly plague. Faced with their imminent mortality, each townsperson finds their true nature liberated, set free at last by the realization of death. For example, a good person might turn bad, a bad person might turn good; a mediocre person might turn mediocre in a different way, like Britney Spears giving up singing to join the Ice Capades.
But Camus may as well have been addressing my existential transformation every summer at Camp Sloane – minus the rodent-borne disease and resultant wholesale death and suffering. Camp was my oasis of personal freedom in the Connecticut Berkshires from ’82 – ’86. There, in a drastic change of setting, free from any pre-ordained identity, I found my true nature as a person willing to weave an incredible web of lies and commit gross acts of manipulation.
The first June I boarded the bus to camp, I thought I would never recover from the sorrow. I looked at my mother on the street tearfully waving me goodbye get smaller and smaller as we drove and I didn’t think I’d ever stop crying. How would I live without my family? But the sadness was gone faster than a pile of fund raiser candy bars I was supposed to be selling and not eating. A girl who literally hid in empty classrooms during gym, took to swimming and tennis playing and horse back riding like some kind of debutante. A budding young artist who spent hours drawing and painting in her room, didn’t pick up so much as a crayon all summer, and instead signed up for every production over at PA –that’s Performing Arts for you non-Sloaners – and took the first steps toward becoming the international model/actress I was going to be when I grew up. Pushed around by a big sister back home, this Pioneer from Tent 5A was anxious to do some gang banging of her own. It wasn’t the healthiest version of autonomy but it was mine.
Set in lush rolling hills, Camp Sloane offered endless natural wonders. So pristine, it made Central Park’s Great Lawn look like a landfill. We rolled in the grass, climbed trees, scaled rocks, went canoeing, picked wild berries along the trails, cleaned up litter after dinner while singing camp songs – we were living like real life smurfs. But it was kind of boring.
But we learned nature could have a dark side, too. All over the grounds grew an indigenous bush that sprouted copious amounts of a poison-filled berry called Doubleberries. Looking like mini-cherries fused together, they were a constant temptation we warned over and over to never eat. Waiting for our counselor one day, I said to my friend Minya, “Hey, dare me to eat a doubleberry?”
“For real?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it.”
I was terrified but I couldn’t back out. I plucked one and slowly started to move it towards my mouth. My mom was going to be so pissed if I died.
“Look, she can’t even get it in her mouth” sang out Anna, the skeptic.
Minya, scared too, saved me. “Just drink some of the juice.”
“Well, alright. If you’re worried so much about it, that’s what I’ll do.” To the sound of shrieks from Minya and Anna, I opened up a berry and touched my tongue to the inside. I spent the next 10 minutes spitting out and that seemed to work. No harm done.
Four days later, I had terrible stomach cramps. Minya and Anna were as pale as ghosts as they watched me writhing on my bunk. We were all thinking of that microliter of doubleberry juice. We confessed to our counselor Kim what happened. She reassured us “but that was 4 days ago, girls.”
“Yeah, and now she’s dying!” cried Minya.
Whatever caused it, it passed – mostly as gas – in the nurse’s office. But I had a feeling of invincibility. I tested the wilderness and had won.
But being cool – my mission – meant acting unexcited. And that was hard in a place full of dork delights. One of the biggest challenges was pretending to dislike square dancing. Twice a summer, traveling caller Jim would park a van equipped with it’s very own self-contained fiddle-blasting sound system next to the tennis courts and we’d allemande left till almost 9 o’clock! However, if you were “in,” you rolled your eyes and made sure to do your dosey does like a zombie. But inside, I loved every second, even the end when he made you do the Alleycat. That’s what my Great Aunt and Uncle did on their cruises! Wasn’t it so grown-up?
A problem I carried around inside and constantly compensated for was feeling like a freak. Coming from a liberal, hippie household which shunned anything commercial or fun, I hadn’t seen E.T. yet, like every other American child. According to my father: “Why see E.T. when Richard the Third is playing?” I spent that summer listening to people talk about E.T. and then repeating the things they said when they weren’t around. It was good to keep it simple, too: Just walk into a room and declare “hey everybody, phone home” – and don’t forget the high fives. I had gained a new way to cover up my shamefully inadequate identity and got closer to the elusive feeling I craved most: normalness. I thought it’s probably what Alyssa Milano felt inside when she did aerobics. Healthy and average!
Another obsession of mine was to appear wealthy. I’d tell people about fancy vacations I went on or was going to go on. Often, my best friend Maggie had no idea what I was talking about.
“When did you go to the Bahamas, Claudia?”
I was a quick thinker. “When you went to Florida for two weeks, we went away, too.”
“You did?”
“What? You don’t you remember?”
“Nooooo.” I can still picture Maggie with arms crossed, looking at me with her eyes narrowed.
“Maybe you’re just so wrapped in yourself all the time and that’s why you didn’t notice.” These statements just came to me. Good god, who was this new person I had become? Because I loved her.
I kept a close eye on a very prominent girl named Stephanie, renowned for having lots of money. She wore Tretorns that seemed to stay clean always and a different Izod shirt everyday. Spying into her tent from mine in the morning, I remember watching her unload clothes out of her trunk I would have died for but that she seemed bored by. Other girls dressed preppy, too, but Stephanie’s family sent her to camp equipped with a walkman. What amounted to a shrunken tape player with no recording function or speaker was being sold for $100 a pop to jogging stockbrokers and other seekers of portable status. To her it was just another toy. People chatted her up just so they could borrow it. The minute I got home, I made sure that next summer, I was going to be the Walkman girl.
*to be continued*
In Albert Camus’ novel “The Plague,” a quiet town finds itself suddenly transformed by a rapid and deadly plague. Faced with their imminent mortality, each townsperson finds their true nature liberated, set free at last by the realization of death. For example, a good person might turn bad, a bad person might turn good; a mediocre person might turn mediocre in a different way, like Britney Spears giving up singing to join the Ice Capades.
But Camus may as well have been addressing my existential transformation every summer at Camp Sloane – minus the rodent-borne disease and resultant wholesale death and suffering. Camp was my oasis of personal freedom in the Connecticut Berkshires from ’82 – ’86. There, in a drastic change of setting, free from any pre-ordained identity, I found my true nature as a person willing to weave an incredible web of lies and commit gross acts of manipulation.
The first June I boarded the bus to camp, I thought I would never recover from the sorrow. I looked at my mother on the street tearfully waving me goodbye get smaller and smaller as we drove and I didn’t think I’d ever stop crying. How would I live without my family? But the sadness was gone faster than a pile of fund raiser candy bars I was supposed to be selling and not eating. A girl who literally hid in empty classrooms during gym, took to swimming and tennis playing and horse back riding like some kind of debutante. A budding young artist who spent hours drawing and painting in her room, didn’t pick up so much as a crayon all summer, and instead signed up for every production over at PA –that’s Performing Arts for you non-Sloaners – and took the first steps toward becoming the international model/actress I was going to be when I grew up. Pushed around by a big sister back home, this Pioneer from Tent 5A was anxious to do some gang banging of her own. It wasn’t the healthiest version of autonomy but it was mine.
Set in lush rolling hills, Camp Sloane offered endless natural wonders. So pristine, it made Central Park’s Great Lawn look like a landfill. We rolled in the grass, climbed trees, scaled rocks, went canoeing, picked wild berries along the trails, cleaned up litter after dinner while singing camp songs – we were living like real life smurfs. But it was kind of boring.
But we learned nature could have a dark side, too. All over the grounds grew an indigenous bush that sprouted copious amounts of a poison-filled berry called Doubleberries. Looking like mini-cherries fused together, they were a constant temptation we warned over and over to never eat. Waiting for our counselor one day, I said to my friend Minya, “Hey, dare me to eat a doubleberry?”
“For real?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it.”
I was terrified but I couldn’t back out. I plucked one and slowly started to move it towards my mouth. My mom was going to be so pissed if I died.
“Look, she can’t even get it in her mouth” sang out Anna, the skeptic.
Minya, scared too, saved me. “Just drink some of the juice.”
“Well, alright. If you’re worried so much about it, that’s what I’ll do.” To the sound of shrieks from Minya and Anna, I opened up a berry and touched my tongue to the inside. I spent the next 10 minutes spitting out and that seemed to work. No harm done.
Four days later, I had terrible stomach cramps. Minya and Anna were as pale as ghosts as they watched me writhing on my bunk. We were all thinking of that microliter of doubleberry juice. We confessed to our counselor Kim what happened. She reassured us “but that was 4 days ago, girls.”
“Yeah, and now she’s dying!” cried Minya.
Whatever caused it, it passed – mostly as gas – in the nurse’s office. But I had a feeling of invincibility. I tested the wilderness and had won.
But being cool – my mission – meant acting unexcited. And that was hard in a place full of dork delights. One of the biggest challenges was pretending to dislike square dancing. Twice a summer, traveling caller Jim would park a van equipped with it’s very own self-contained fiddle-blasting sound system next to the tennis courts and we’d allemande left till almost 9 o’clock! However, if you were “in,” you rolled your eyes and made sure to do your dosey does like a zombie. But inside, I loved every second, even the end when he made you do the Alleycat. That’s what my Great Aunt and Uncle did on their cruises! Wasn’t it so grown-up?
A problem I carried around inside and constantly compensated for was feeling like a freak. Coming from a liberal, hippie household which shunned anything commercial or fun, I hadn’t seen E.T. yet, like every other American child. According to my father: “Why see E.T. when Richard the Third is playing?” I spent that summer listening to people talk about E.T. and then repeating the things they said when they weren’t around. It was good to keep it simple, too: Just walk into a room and declare “hey everybody, phone home” – and don’t forget the high fives. I had gained a new way to cover up my shamefully inadequate identity and got closer to the elusive feeling I craved most: normalness. I thought it’s probably what Alyssa Milano felt inside when she did aerobics. Healthy and average!
Another obsession of mine was to appear wealthy. I’d tell people about fancy vacations I went on or was going to go on. Often, my best friend Maggie had no idea what I was talking about.
“When did you go to the Bahamas, Claudia?”
I was a quick thinker. “When you went to Florida for two weeks, we went away, too.”
“You did?”
“What? You don’t you remember?”
“Nooooo.” I can still picture Maggie with arms crossed, looking at me with her eyes narrowed.
“Maybe you’re just so wrapped in yourself all the time and that’s why you didn’t notice.” These statements just came to me. Good god, who was this new person I had become? Because I loved her.
I kept a close eye on a very prominent girl named Stephanie, renowned for having lots of money. She wore Tretorns that seemed to stay clean always and a different Izod shirt everyday. Spying into her tent from mine in the morning, I remember watching her unload clothes out of her trunk I would have died for but that she seemed bored by. Other girls dressed preppy, too, but Stephanie’s family sent her to camp equipped with a walkman. What amounted to a shrunken tape player with no recording function or speaker was being sold for $100 a pop to jogging stockbrokers and other seekers of portable status. To her it was just another toy. People chatted her up just so they could borrow it. The minute I got home, I made sure that next summer, I was going to be the Walkman girl.
*to be continued*
posted by claudia at 2:04 PM
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