It is What it Is

Four Camp Memories* and a Wedding

There are plenty of places I've been that I thought I would never see again. Camp McDowell in Navou, Alabama was definitely one of them. Despite the fact that Camp McDowell is the Episcopal camp in Alabama, and I am, in fact, an Episcopalian from Alabama, one week back in the summer of 1993 was more than enough for me.

There are only three things that I can remember about that week (and the name of my pictured cabin counselor is not one of them, Dawn?):

1. A boy with a mullet had a crush on my friend Leah. He came over to me at the swimming pool one day and asked me if she liked him back. I had to turn him down for her. The next day, we saw the same mullet-ed boy making out with another girl in the pool. It wasn't so much the betrayal that shocked me as much as the seeming lack of hygiene and supervision. All I can remember thinking is, "All of these people in one body of water, and now those two are tonguing each other in the middle of it. This can't be sanitary," plus, "Why doesn't the lifeguard care?"

Heathens and Happy Hernando

A few weeks ago, the SO and I took a trip to DeSoto Caverns outside of Childersburg, Alabama. (I like to do really cheesy things, and the SO likes to take pictures, and amazingly, these two interests often coincide.)

For those of you who don't know, DeSoto Caverns is the country's first recorded cave (I don't know what this honor means either), and it's a rather amazing natural phenomenon full of stalactites, stalagmites and the like. (By "the like," I mean stuff I didn't bother to pay attention to in either science class or the guided tour.)

The good people who own the cave have seen fit to fill the area around it with attractions like panning for gemstones, a maze and water gun shooting forts. The attractions are pretty fun, and a good way to drive up the price of admission. Of course, rock candy and fudge are for sale in the gift shop, too.

The SO and I had a good time. We engaged in some archery. (I say we didn't keep score. The SO claims victory.) I fed some llamas, and of course, there was the panning for gemstones, maze-running (that I did kick ass at) and cave-touring. But, there were two rather troublesome aspects to the whole adventure.

1. The mascot for DeSoto Caverns is Happy Hernando. Now, while I have no problem with lying to children in some respects -- the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, "Of course Mom and Dad never smoked pot" -- I have my limits. And turning Hernando DeSoto into Happy Hernando, the cutest of the conquistadors, just seems wrong. After all, we're talking about a man known for his cruelty in wiping out and enslaving indigenous peoples wherever he went. Dressing him in all primary colors and adding a jaunty hat doesn't seem like enough to whitewash that past. 

A Birthday and the Unexpected

When I was about five, my family moved into a new house on Crestside Road in Mountain Brook near the water tower and the local public high school. It took me quite awhile to recover from the indignity of the move. (How could they tear me away from my childhood home just like that? And it wasn't just any home -- there was an elementary school across the street complete with the largest playground I had ever seen. To take a child  away from her very own across-the-street playground? The cruelty astounds me to this day.)

Eventually, I recovered from the trauma and came to enjoy our much bigger backyard and the decadence of living in a three story house. (It was actually just a split level.) There were also a lot more children our age around, and it was fun to ride bikes, organize kickball games and dig around looking for arrowheads.

There were two new girls, in particular, that I decided I needed to immediately befriend. Both were my age, and while one lived across the street, the other lived a block and a half down or so. They seemed to do everything together, and I had to be a part of it.

It was after a few days of playing house (and trying to get them to like me even though they knew all the same people from school while I was the odd private-school-kid out) that I learned even more about them, "Oh, we're not just friends," Sally said, "we're cousins, too."

I was in awe. For my five-year-old self, being friends was one thing. Being best friends was a whole other sacred and longed-for entity, but being best friends and cousins was cooler and by far better than anything I could ever think of. You chose each other, and you were real-life -- not-just-blood-brothers -- related? I couldn't think of anything better.

I Don't Do Lines

I believe there are certain attributes we're allotted fixed quantities of each day -- cleanliness, courtesy, tolerance for TNT promos. No matter what we do, only a new night will refresh our stores and allow us to again be thoughtful, caring members of the human race. I think patience is one such attribute.

I usually have a wealth of patience for children and animals. For everyone else, it's a crap shoot. Normally, I can allot my patience throughout the day -- an extra five minutes waiting in traffic, a few more minutes for the cashier in training at the BP station, deep breaths when someone asks how I ever expect to earn a living as a writer. But, if anything exceptionally time-consuming happens, my patience for the whole day is shot.

If the pharmacists takes 45 minutes to fill a prescription he or she promised in 10 minutes, I'll be perfectly cordial to that pharmacist. (Should I be worried that all of my anecdotes take place in the pharmacy? I guess we all write what we now.) I'll thank him or her and take my meds without complaint.

However, the next person to slow me down is out of luck.

What the Heck

I'm not sure whether or not I believe in a hell. I grew up Methodist and Episcopalian, and truth be told, even if I remembered the views of those two churches on the subject, it probably wouldn't matter much. I tend to like to make up my own mind. (I have issues with authority. I really can't imagine this as coming as much of a surprise.) I also attended a Catholic university, and even though I'm very sure where it stands on the issue, I also tend to disagree with the Catholic church. Stances on womens' roles and birth control are only the beginning of our failure to see eye to eye.

The bottom line is that my theology can be somewhat fluid, and I'm not always sure eternal damnation fits in with my conviction/hope of a benevolent God.

Despite my somewhat ambivalent stance on possibilities for the afterlife, I am fond of using the phrase "that sounds like my idea of hell." This started as a way to let friends know which activities I was and was not interested in participating in, e.g. "I'm in for the Ryan Adams concert but The Creed show sounds like my idea of hell." With time though, the phrase has really come to encompass what I do and don't value in this world.

All Smiles

Like most human beings, I use body language to give me clues about what another person is thinking or feeling and how they are likely to respond to a given situation. I assume that the grimacing person with their arms crossed is unlikely to buy whatever I am selling or give me a good teacher evaluation at the end of the semester or even want to offer a flotation device if I was drowning. I hope the grinning person who makes eye contact is a fan.

This might be just one of the reasons that I am continually amazed at the things people will say and do with a smile on. (Another reason probably has something to do with those who misrepresent themselves for the purpose of deceit and some underlying trust issues, but reason #1 seems far easier to tackle in a simple blog post.)

A few years ago, I was sitting at a party with a new acquaintance. We were discussing books because we both liked to read. Beers were in hand. We were both smiling and laughing. I mentioned how amazing I thought Oprah’s book club was because of the boon it had given to so many writers sales- and publicity-wise.

“Yep,” he said, seeming to take in my words and give them some thoughtful consideration, “because she’s black.”

Proof of a Dirty Mind?

This past Saturday, the SO (significant other) and I headed out for some quality time and yard sale perusing. After running by the farmer's market (aren't we fabulously young and hip? -- if you ignore the whole yard sale tour), our second stop was a large rummage sale at the local Catholic school.

Now, being that it was a Catholic school, you can imagine my surprise to look up and see the word "SEX" in huge red letters on the gym wall. I went to Georgetown after all; I'm familiar with how the Catholics feel about sex of the pre-marital variety and couldn't help but wonder why "no," "never" or "only if you're married" weren't posted nearby for the impressionable youth crowd.

I spent a good 30 seconds staring at the wall and wondering why, oh why, this would be what the priests and nuns chose to put there and another 30 seconds wondering why no one else was as taken aback as I was. Was a priest going to find me and reprimand me just for staring at the word?

More Holiday Memories

At my (Episcopalian) elementary school, our biggest production was the annual "Lessons and Carols" Christmas songfest. Every year, on the first weekend of December, we would put on a very long program of everyone’s favorite Christmas carols (if your favorites included the Jesus-friendly "O’ Little Town of Bethlehem" and "I Saw Three Ships" as opposed to the more secular "Jingle Bells") intermixed with readings about the birth of Christ.

(Even as I’m typing this, I want to write that the show amounted to three hours, but I’m sure that someone will correct me or balk. Just let me assure you that "Lessons and Carols" felt four times longer than it actually was. And, that’s not just my childhood attention span talking - my father would agree.)

Each year concluded with rounds of applause and all of our teachers crying as we sang "O’ Holy Night" in the candlelight in French. Despite the fact that "Lessons and Carols" led to massive adoration, praise, and clapping, there were few events I despised as much as it.

We always started practicing about two weeks after school started in August (seriously), and we spent a big part of every week trapped in music class with our obviously-frustrated-with-the-direction-of-his-career teacher as he ranted at us and held out the part of playing the triangle like it was the equivalent of be given a puppy or taken to the chocolate store with an unlimited budget.

Plus, since the program never changed, it’s not like there was a lot of variety to the days ... or years. Also, when we consider the fact that I’m tone deaf, I think you can imagine how much I got yelled at and how many practices ran long because of all the mid-song stops made when "someone was off-key."

Unfortunately still, as much as I dreaded every day of the fall because it involved "Lessons and Carols" practice, nothing was as bad as my third grade year. Third grade was the first year that you had to make it through the entire "Lessons and Carols" program in the church. Students in kindergarten through second grade got to enter the chapel for a few songs and then leave to return to their classrooms when they were done. For third graders, those days of ease and mirth were over.