money went.
QUESTION
Dave and Holly, how old are you? And is camp like your whole job all year or is there other stuff?
THE MISSING LINES
I was checking the clothesline for warm fuzzies when I noticed Tad Gunnick climbing up on the bench Dave stands on to make announcements, and there a small crowd of us gathered around him.
“What do you call a cheese that isn’t yours?” Tad asked us. We began to respond, but he continued. “Why did the chicken cross the road? Where do bats get their energy? Knock, knock, who’s there, the interrupting cow. How do you know when a blonde has been making chocolate chip cookies? How many hucksters does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two guys are getting drunk at the top of a very tall building and one says to the other, ‘I bet you I can jump out the window, fly around, and come back safe.’ Yo mama’s so fat. You might be a redneck if. What’s Lorena Bobbitt’s favorite kind of soda? What do you call a dog that can tell time?”
After awhile, some campers among us began to grumble. Who is this Tad Gunnick, we wondered, who offers jokes and withholds the punchlines? Tad guessed at our concern and said, “The time will soon come when I am no longer here and you will have to provide your own punchlines.”
“But why, Tad?” one said.
“Where will you go?” said another.
Tad answered, “Arizona State,” and slipped away from us in the confusion.
DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
Kids come to me in their little tears, wanting to know one thing: “How do I take Fun Camp down the mountain, Chaplain Bernadette?” You come here and have this literally mountaintop experience then go home again to your old friends, your old neighbors, your old parents, them ready to snatch you back into old boring habits. Well don’t you let them! You can water balloon bombard from any tower in this nation. You can whittle Mom a totem in your room any winter Sunday. On inner city sidewalks you can nature hike through the machete-blazed footpaths of your own minds. You can joke like Tad. You can skit on the street. Be Fun Camp to your commute-weary parents, Fun Camp to your grave mustachioed principal, Fun Camp to the salt-of-the-earth cigarette flickers loitering up and down the promenade. All of them saying, “Sweep this mess! Read this book! Do this math problem!” Kids, what pleasure has an exciting person ever gleaned proofing an obtuse? The proof’ll be all around you! If you keep your heart locked up in a camp that knows best, no authority’s got a chance. Now turn in your songbooks to page 12, “We Are the Champions,” and really focus on the words, really knowing in the heart of your heart that we win. As we stand. And as we sing.
ONE WEEK
One week? So many sticky memories in such a disposable duration seems impossible. In seventy-five years, you’ll be grizzled on some hospital bed, leaning too hard on memories to divert you from a slow death, struggling to recall your husband’s name, hard-pressed to find a memory about which you can confidently say, “That was in my thirties,” but speaking in complete paragraphs about the boy you met when he came plowing into you at kickball, about when you yelled “gin!” during Spades and made him laugh, about the conspiratorial lunch table whispers you and his friends shared over whether he’d be your boyfriend, about the stiff goodbye when he left a night early to get to an aunt’s wedding, about the cheek peck he gave you, and about the note to him you’d folded into your sock. A note that scratched your ankle with each step as you went to meet him and again on the way back. His mom was watching from the car, smiling weird. You were from the city and camp was your first time seeing a real night sky. “I never told you all this, Dad,” old you will say to your old husband. “I kept it a secret.” But you’ve told him for years. He eggs you on cause he sees how you love to tell it, how each time you think of it, it’s a revelation,
QUESTION
Dave and Holly, how old are you? And is camp like your whole job all year or is there other stuff?
THE MISSING LINES
I was checking the clothesline for warm fuzzies when I noticed Tad Gunnick climbing up on the bench Dave stands on to make announcements, and there a small crowd of us gathered around him.
“What do you call a cheese that isn’t yours?” Tad asked us. We began to respond, but he continued. “Why did the chicken cross the road? Where do bats get their energy? Knock, knock, who’s there, the interrupting cow. How do you know when a blonde has been making chocolate chip cookies? How many hucksters does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two guys are getting drunk at the top of a very tall building and one says to the other, ‘I bet you I can jump out the window, fly around, and come back safe.’ Yo mama’s so fat. You might be a redneck if. What’s Lorena Bobbitt’s favorite kind of soda? What do you call a dog that can tell time?”
After awhile, some campers among us began to grumble. Who is this Tad Gunnick, we wondered, who offers jokes and withholds the punchlines? Tad guessed at our concern and said, “The time will soon come when I am no longer here and you will have to provide your own punchlines.”
“But why, Tad?” one said.
“Where will you go?” said another.
Tad answered, “Arizona State,” and slipped away from us in the confusion.
DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
Kids come to me in their little tears, wanting to know one thing: “How do I take Fun Camp down the mountain, Chaplain Bernadette?” You come here and have this literally mountaintop experience then go home again to your old friends, your old neighbors, your old parents, them ready to snatch you back into old boring habits. Well don’t you let them! You can water balloon bombard from any tower in this nation. You can whittle Mom a totem in your room any winter Sunday. On inner city sidewalks you can nature hike through the machete-blazed footpaths of your own minds. You can joke like Tad. You can skit on the street. Be Fun Camp to your commute-weary parents, Fun Camp to your grave mustachioed principal, Fun Camp to the salt-of-the-earth cigarette flickers loitering up and down the promenade. All of them saying, “Sweep this mess! Read this book! Do this math problem!” Kids, what pleasure has an exciting person ever gleaned proofing an obtuse? The proof’ll be all around you! If you keep your heart locked up in a camp that knows best, no authority’s got a chance. Now turn in your songbooks to page 12, “We Are the Champions,” and really focus on the words, really knowing in the heart of your heart that we win. As we stand. And as we sing.
ONE WEEK
One week? So many sticky memories in such a disposable duration seems impossible. In seventy-five years, you’ll be grizzled on some hospital bed, leaning too hard on memories to divert you from a slow death, struggling to recall your husband’s name, hard-pressed to find a memory about which you can confidently say, “That was in my thirties,” but speaking in complete paragraphs about the boy you met when he came plowing into you at kickball, about when you yelled “gin!” during Spades and made him laugh, about the conspiratorial lunch table whispers you and his friends shared over whether he’d be your boyfriend, about the stiff goodbye when he left a night early to get to an aunt’s wedding, about the cheek peck he gave you, and about the note to him you’d folded into your sock. A note that scratched your ankle with each step as you went to meet him and again on the way back. His mom was watching from the car, smiling weird. You were from the city and camp was your first time seeing a real night sky. “I never told you all this, Dad,” old you will say to your old husband. “I kept it a secret.” But you’ve told him for years. He eggs you on cause he sees how you love to tell it, how each time you think of it, it’s a revelation,
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