Idyllic boyhood memories: summertime and the Fun Float
At the age of 10, I was exiled to New Hampshire for a month to attend Camp Berea, an all-boys Christian summer camp. Strongly scented memories percolate from the memory clusters of that period: My father's daily postcards, which were so wryly hysterical that the founder of the camp began to read them out loud to the camp every mail call. A hoard of sweets and lukewarm soda cans, stashed underneath my mattress for comfort on lonely, homesick nights. My best friend, also a John, who looked exactly like a young, androgynous Christina Ricci, thus tickling my own innate, pre-pubertal homoeroticism. Endlessly poring through a care package of comics my parents sent me, which included omnibuses of "Flash Gordon" and "Fearless Fosdick." The terrifying, wide-eyed marionette who was trotted out every night after dinner to compel us in nightmarish falsetto to give ourselves over to the Lord. "Reflection:" a form of punishment for bad behavior in which one was sent into a large room full of mirrors for an hour and forced to consider the infinite reflection of one's own sinful flesh. The time I got lost in the woods, was confronted by a bear and had no choice but to become born again (an offer since rescinded) to escape a mauling. Chopping the tip of my thumb off with a hatchet.
Good times. But the Fun Float will always be my most vibrant childhood memory.
Imagine a gigantic banana-yellow trampoline, floating on a lake. A thousand slippery children climbing all over it, laughing, pushing, hurling each other over the brink with a splash. You have to be a good swimmer to make your way out to it, and even when wistfully stared upon from the shoreline, it is clearly no domain for the meek. It was the Zembla of the Big Kids, the Red Bands... those kids who'd proven themselves able enough swimmers to paddle their way past wading depths... largely through a tortuous rite of passage involving a two mile swim and the ability to touch the hand of a submerged, scuba-ing instructor, sitting Indian style on the lake's slimy bottom.
After two weeks of staring from the shoreline upon the mirage-like Ilium of the Fun Float — a bouncing pleasure palace of raucous delight — I successfully completed these tasks. My arms aching, I swam two miles as a camp counselor paddled his way behind me, encouragingly booming out a recitation of the Trials of Christ — NIV, of course — that echoed boisterously across the lake. Filling my lungs with air, I dived to the lake's cthonic depths and high-fived my swimming instructor among the scum-sucking catfish; popping up to the surface, blood vessels in both of my eyes burst. I'd suffered for the Fun Float. I would be let among the Red Bands.
But as I pulled myself up its slippery skin for the first time, I could immediately see that not everything was as it appeared from the shore. I had imagined it as a peaceful place... a sort of bobbing Neverland of youthful camaraderie. It was not... or, at least, not for fifth graders. For us? A pocket of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. Lord of the Flies. Cannibalistic Apocalypse. Jacob's Ladder. Bosch's Hell.
The Fun Float sagged in the middle: a killing pit in which smaller and flabbier kids grabbed their ruptured spleens, vomited lake water and wept for their mommies. And those god-like lake Adonises, the fabled Red Bands, the brothers I had proven worthy of by trial of fire? They were eighth graders, twice my size. And when their eyes fell upon me, they lit up and smacked their lips with malevolent glee. I didn't hear the cries of welcome I expected. All I heard was:
"Hey! New fish! Get him."
The mind races quickly when the body is put in bone-breaking peril. As the nearest advanced upon me and grabbed by my throat — a leering, sun-burnt mutant — I acted out of self-preseving instinct. All of a sudden, my perception on the Fun Float changed: this wasn't like a playground, it was like a prison. The only way to earn the respect of the murderous thugs with whom I was isolated? I needed to take down the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the place... quick, hard and brutally. And, as luck would have it, that motherfucker had already attacked.
So I grabbed him as hard as I could by the testicles and squeezed. No remorse.
Instantly, he let me go, squealing like a castrati. But I couldn't let it go there. I couldn't just win this battle. I had to win all the battles that were to come. I had to break him.
I twisted.
The mutant screamed. His legs went out from under him and he loudly smacked onto the Fun Float's skin, his arms and legs thrashing. Immediately his friends were upon me, lifting me off and hurling me off the Fun Float. But I still didn't let go. Instead, I slammed into the side of the buoying lake trampoline, holding on to my place among the Red Bands with ferocious resolve by my only grip: another Red Band's taint. I would not give up my place upon the Fun Float so easily.
It was chaos. Everyone was screaming. My tormentor — now my helpless victim — screamed for help; the mutant began kicking me in the chest as he was slowly pulled off the Fun Float along with me. But his fellow Red Bands misunderstood his high-pitched yelps for assistance. He wanted them to pry my fingers off. Instead, they grabbed him by the arms and held him fast, just at the point when we might both have slid into the water. Ninety pounds of kicking, screaming fifth-grader fought the force of gravity upon his scrotum.
It was too much for him. With one last sow-like squeal, he passed out. Triumphantly I climbed up his slack, bloated body to take my rightful place as the King of the Red Bands.
But this story does not have a happy ending. It was not to be. I was denied the Fun Float. Camp counselors, hearing a rather one-sided version of the ordeal, demoted me back to the humiliating level of blue band (prerequisite: doggie-style paddling). I spent the next two weeks having the crap beaten out of me every day (punctuated dutifully with a haymaker to the nuts) by fifty outraged eight graders for my trouble.
In retrospect, I might have overreacted.
Buy a Fun Float now for your kids! Starting at only $2000!
Aqua Jump Water Trampoline [Rave Sports]
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John, have you finished that article detailing SQL Server's "sum(float)" function yet? I left a message on your voice mail.
Don't push him Joel, he'll grab your nuts.
The gadget-blog equivalent of the shaggy dog story.
Were there "pre-pubertal homoeroticism" in the shaggy dog story? I must've missed that part.
At least your version doesn't have the Nazi-sympathizing overtones that Orson Scott Card's does.
HOLY CRAP!! What a great story.
So now I know... I will never, EVER go near a "fun float". :)
I didn't say it was THE shaggy dog story. I said it was the gadget-blog equivalent. And "pre-pubertal homoeroticism" is rampant in gadget-blogs (I think it's actually in the charter).
:D
I'm glad I wasn't the only one getting 'Ender's Game' vibes out of that. Orson Scott Card FTW!
I just learned that Pre-pubertal is actually a word. I would have thought it would be prepubescent.
“I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.” - Andrew "Ender" Wiggin
Where do I submit my nomination for Blog Post of the Year?
Oh my! If I'd known this in Berlin, I never would have fed you so much beer.
I applaud your bear survival tactics! Very smart. Like the time I swore off dirty magazines as my car spun out of control in a snow storm... I plan on re-upping that promise the next time I find myself in peril.
As I was finishing laundry the other morning and putting the clean clothes into an oversized Apple store shopping sack, I happened to remember my own summer camp experience! Here is my story!
The summer before sixth grade, I was sent to a Bible camp in Arkansas. And with a bunch of cute new clothes! Because you could see into the shower stalls, I decided to take every single shower in a one-piece bathing suit, which I never once removed that summer.
One girl's dad had unexpectedly dumped her at camp -- she was supposed to stay with him that summer, but he would have none of it. So there she was, in our cabin. We tried to be nice.
The last day before summer camp, she stole all of my clothes, and most of everyone else's. When I flew home in late August, it was with an empty suitcase and a gnarly case of full-body poison oak rash. Also, my hair had turned fluorescent green from the chlorine in a pool. My mom took me several times to a salon to have my hair stripped of color. It remained green. Finally, the hairdresser dyed it brown.
Partway through the first month of sixth grade, kids had started squinting at my hair. "Is your hair... green?" they'd ask hesitantly. "Oh, I thought so too, at first," I'd say. Then I'd point up. "It's those weird lights." "Oh," they'd say. No one was the wiser.
I was never sent to summer camp again!
Not since you've come on board with BBG have I thought so fondly of the Pimp Junta days. Bravo, sir. Bravo.
And he's taken it down, the bastard.
You sir, are a rare and wonderful creature. May this post live on in perpetuity.
TL;DR
My summer camp (ironically, a Christian girls camp) has the exact same float!! It's fabulous fun :)
Unfortunately and in the name of NY state safety laws, we 1) must allow only 8 girls on at a time, 2) have two lifeguards on it, 3) it's located in fairly shallow water, 4) girls must wear life jackets and demonstrate comfort with their face in the water, and 5)... limited bouncing on the trampoline in the middle.
Aw.
In my experience, most of these semi-permanent lake floats are covered in duck shit.
OK its decided, BBG writers rule the roost.
I didn't pull Pimp Junta, the old host went belly up. I do need to set it back up at some point, though.
Summer camp is the best place in the entire universe. Even a religious summer camp is better than none at all. It's a crime that the vast majority of parents do not send their kids. I mean, how could they not want to get rid of the little buggers for eight weeks every year?
Dude.
I can't bookmark this site any more than I already have, I'm not making it my homepage!
...until chapter two is over anyway.
Man! Who know BBG would turn into such good summer reading!
(My guess is that John and Joel are taking turns hiding the big Thesaurus from each other throughout the day at this point, and that the clacking of the typewriters is deafening as one wades through piles of wadded up drafts in the office.)
No problem, just let Housekeeping know. It's totally worth it.
You owe me a keyboard... I'm surprised I'm the first to say it.
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