The Kids are Brats, the Food is Hi-De-Ous!

Finally the girls settle down and snuggle into bunks and nod off.

The ladies and I tiptoe into our room and prepare for bed. I can see my breath in the moonlit room. I am wearing sweatpants, a long sleeve T-shirt, a polar fleece and socks to bed. Carmella has donned a ski cap. Debbie, the pro camper has some kind of cocoon sleeping bag that she might be able to go into outer space with. Carmella is remarking about her solar-something-or-other gear. I roll out Scott’s Coleman sleeping bag anticipating the worst.

I am completely surprised. Of the three of us, I sleep the best. That isn’t to suggest that anyone slept well on the 3 inch flea bags we called mattresses. But I wasn’t cold. In fact I was a little overheated. (Thank God for peri-menopause. I could fry an egg on my abs.)

I was up to watch the sun rise over the lake and texted Scott to thank him for the toasty sleeping gear. He sent me a text that he hoped the big hairy spider picked someone else’s bunk.

First things first. I need coffee. When does the Mess Hall open, where is it, and can I go early??? And if I can’t go early, how do we rouse the troops and begin the hike to wherever it is that the food lives?

The girls begin to shuffle about in their quarters and the games begin…All the questions about what should be worn for what activity and what will get wet and how long until I get to change out of it. It is like schizophrenia Pee Wee Herman-style.

Most entertaining was the modesty. While Carmella and Debbie and I just get up and change, the girls are willing to wait patiently to go one by one into our filthy bathroom to privately change from pajamas to clothes without anyone getting a peek. No one dare exposed a training bra, a panty or a bare naked anything. I can only imagine what the swimming activity is like in the summer. It must take ages.

But soon enough we are hiking down the trail and across the creek toward the Mess Hall.

And in the light of day (barely) I can see that it is exactly the same rustic structure in which I “dined” nearly 40 years ago – and I’m kind of in a flop sweat.

When I was 8, the Mess Hall was filled with long tables where 10 or so people could sit together. At the end of each meal we sang some cheerful little campfire ditty with little breaks in it. What the counselors did was a campfire version of Follow the Bouncing Ball or Duck Duck Goose…and tapped each campers head around the table on each syllable of the song we were all gleefully singing. When the pause came in the song, if the counselor’s hand was upon your head, you were assigned one of the jobs.

And this is where the horror began. For what seemed like every meal, I got picked for a job…and most often I was the Scraper.

The Scraper had the dubious honor of taking all the plates and cups that had been collected by the Clearer, which had been thrown willy-nilly into a gray tub, and scraping the ewey gooey remains of the meals into the trash bin. Mashed potatoes mixed with grape juice. Corn blended with coleslaw. Spaghetti mashed with fruit cup.

I gagged through the entire experience. I was sure being a POW was better.

What would be the routine now, 40 years later? And what if my child is the scraper? I will surely have a heart attack and die.

I am figuratively breathing into a paper bag as we cross the threshold into the Mess Hall and are greeted warmly by the Kitchen Nazis.

Give me strength.