WYSIWYG: The morning after

I've never been much of a public speaker. In fact, I've pretty much been a public speaking disaster mostly, with a flushed face, shaking hands and heroic use of the word "um." Last night, though, in a great personal triumph I attribute to supportive friends, my cat's anti-anxiety pills and not having to follow this chick, I pulled it off. Here's what I read, and I'll post links to everyone else's absolutely hilarious stories as they post them.

Some people go away to summer camp and lose their virginity.

Some people go away to summer camp and drink their first beer, or smoke their first joint.

Some people go away to summer camp and sneak out of their tents late at night, strip off their clothes and skinny dip in a cold lake for the first time.

Me? I went to summer camp, but I didn't do any of those things. Why, you ask? Because I went to Christian summer camp.

Did I swim and hike and row canoes? Sure I did. But I also sang the following words to the tune of Louey Louey in a chapel on the beach.

Pharoah Pharoah
Oh, baby, let my people go.
Ugh.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Did I sit on a log and sing Bob Dylan songs while roasting marshmallows over a campfire? Yup. But I also painted my face, put on a red nose and engaged in a little something called clown ministry. And not just on the campgrounds, mind you. We traveled.

Still, Christian camp or godless heathen camp, some things are pretty much universal. Like drama. And betrayal. And heartbreak.

I went to my particular Christian summer camp in the Adirondacks every summer, starting in 7th grade and ending the summer after my freshman year in college, when I worked on staff with my best friend, Amanda.

Things had been a little tense between Amanda and I. Some time during our senior year in high school, she'd embarked on a mission to "find herself," and by find herself I mean ditch all her friends to hang out with total assholes. Things got bad during the school year, and by the time we arrived at camp to live and work together for an entire summer, we could barely stand one another. Still, I had other friends on staff, and there were always cute boys, right?

Wrong. There were eleven single girls on staff and exactly two single boys. One of the single boys, John, was so not my type. Nice, but I wasn't feeling it. Bill, the other one, was the "outcamp," guy, which meant he popped in every Saturday, grabbed his group of kids and took them on a 5-day expedition in the mountains. Basically, we didn't even see Bill for the first couple of weeks.

Being the outcamp guy, Bill had a luxury the rest of us did not – two days off in a row every week. And those two days were Friday and Saturday. The rest of us had one rotating day per week, plus half of Saturday after the week's campers left. Around week three, Bill started spending his days off roaming around camp. And we got to talking.

Bill was cute. And weird. Which are the two things I look for most in a guy, really. There was only one problem – Amanda had started batting her eyelashes at him, too. Channeling two years of accumulated anger at her, I thought, "This. Is. War."

I started by casually mentioning to Bill that I had Friday off that week. I didn't initially, but my friend Holly was nice enough to switch with me. Bill took the bait.

"Let's go hike that new trail behind the athletic field," he suggested. It was on.

As we hiked, we shared a water bottle and talked about music. I mentioned that Pantera was one of my favorite bands. He stopped walking, and faced me with a Very Serious Expression on his face.

"I. Love. Pantera." He said. "What's your favorite song?"

"Fucking Hostile," I said. "Yours?"

"Cemetery Gates."

Yeah, I scored major points during that hike. Or so I thought until I noticed Bill sitting next to Amanda at evening worship. When we sang the olly-olly-olly-alleluiah song, Amanda got to shake the hand of the one next to ya, and scratch the back of the one next to ya, and give a hug to the one next to ya and the worst part? Praise the Lord with the one next to ya, which involved hand-holding. I was pissed.

The next day, Bill popped into the kitchen while I was cleaning up to give me an impromptu backrub. I started telling him about my awful day with the Head Chef From Hell when we were rudely interrupted by Amanda.

"Hi guys!" she said brightly, but I noticed a quick flash of rage in her eyes. "Bill, did you know your father's here? I was just talking to him."

Bill went off to meet his father, and I started to wonder if this maybe wasn't going to work out. Bill's father was a minister, and something told me he might not approve of the young woman with the Manic Panic blue hair and the nose ring who was maybe an atheist mooning over his son. I met Bill Senior, and he was very nice. Years later, I'd find out that Daddy Bill was quite proud of the fact that there were two cute girls making "cow eyes" at his son.

The next day, I stood behind Amanda and watched as she rifled through my mailbox. She didn't see me there. I saw her take out a note, read it, say "Ugh!," crumple it up and put it back in my mailbox. Once she was out of sight, I read it for myself.

Jess –
Don't let the Head Chef From Hell get you down today. I'll be thinking about you and sending good vibes your way.
- Bill

I saw him later, gave him a hug and thanked him for the note. Late that night, a bunch of us, Amanda and Bill included, met down by the chapel for a mission. We were going to play a prank on the nearby 4-H camp. Now, a warning. The prank I'm about to describe to you is pretty much the dorkiest thing ever. We decided to take the 6 foot wooden cross no one was using from the chapel, carry it trough the woods to the 4-H camp, take their welcome sign and leave the cross in its place. That way, when they woke up and saw that their sign was gone, they'd know that the Jesus freaks across the lake did it.

Bill carried the cross while Amanda and I took turns helping him, and by took turns I mean practically clawed each other's eyes out in order to get a turn. I eventually gave up, because 1) that cross was really fucking heavy and 2) Bill and I had a hot date planned for the next day. Off the campground.

Holly was kind enough to lend me her bike for my big outing. I hadn't been on a bike in years, but figured that if everything you never forget how to do is like riding a bike, than I'd be all right. Bill and I were off, chatting and riding. And riding. And riding. And riding. And I started to get tired.

I suggested we take a break, or rather, I pulled off to the side of the road, threw myself off the bike in a most dramatic fashion and said that I couldn't go on. We decided to have our picnic early, right there on a stranger's lawn. It was lovely. We chatted. We laughed. After we ate, Bill suggested we bike out the five miles to Fawn Lake and hike the trail. That sounded about as appealing as a game of golf, which for me, roughly translates into not at all. I wanted a rest and Bill wanted an adventure. He offered to do something more low-key and I told him he should go out to Fawn Lake by himself. I insisted and after much back-and-forth, he went. I headed back to camp and told Holly the whole story.

"He's spending his day off tomorrow with Amanda," she warned me.

Amanda and Bill went on a 6,000 mile biking, jogging, swimming, canoeing, hiking, mountain-climbing, jazzercise extravaganza that day, and I was officially out of the running. A year later, I was the maid of honor at their wedding.

There's a bright side, though. Amanda and I had a huge blowout over the Bill thing, which resulted in us talking, and talking, and talking, and finally resolving all the bullshit that had been building up for two years. And these days, when Bill and Amanda bicker about something in front of me, I get to say obnoxious things like, "See Bill? You should have married me."

Holly had her own bright side to my situation.

"It's high school week next week," she said. "There might be some cute campers."

There were cute campers that week, and while the Catholic church may love their pedophilia, not so much on the Dutch Reformed Christian summer camps. There was better news, though. Ryan, my childhood summer camp crush, he of the green nail polish and dreads and overalls, who juggled bowling pins and played the Peanuts song every year for the talent show, he was a volunteer cabin counselor that week. I didn't want another Amanda situation, though, so I decided to make an announcement.

"Ladies!" I called the girls on staff to attention as we all sat around Pine Lodge, our home for the summer. "Ryan is a cabin counselor this week, and as many of you know, I've had a crush on him for, like, ever. I am hereby calling dibs. Anyone who tries to get in my way will suffer bodily harm. He's mine."

And he was, as soon as I showed him my Manic Panic stash and offered to share. Praise Jesus, indeed.

RELATED LINKS: Linus took some pics.