My Least Favorite Time of the Year

It's coming upon us like the plague came upon the Hebrews in Egypt. I feel this impending dread and doom, and once again I'm starting to wonder,

"Can I make it through the summer this year?"

Sure, no more school and no more going to Church on Christmas and Easter. Sure, summer is the time where first kisses and unplanned pregnancies happen. Much magic occurs in summer.

But you know what they don't tell you about in High School Music 2 and National Lampoon's Vacation is about all of the TERRIBLE AND DEADLY HORRORS THAT HAPPEN IN THE SUMMER!

Bumblebees as big as small rocks! A scorching sun that would give nerds horrible sunburn if they weren't all inside playing Call of Duty. Snakes that may be more afraid of you than you are of them, but still make scary hissing noises and stare at you funny. Relatives who you've avoided seeing all summer but manage to keep coming back at you like like the twenty two year-old who should be going to college but instead is hanging around in his parents' basement, insisting that playing lead guitar in a garage band counts as employment. Campouts! Crowded swimming pools! Summer jobs!

SUMMER CAMP!!!



I have had three encounters with summer camp in all of my life. All three mentally scarred me. Some celebrities write autobiographies about how their relatives molested them, or their fathers beat them, or how they got mixed up in drugs in high school. Not me. I'm going to write about how horrible summer camp is, and how everyone is brainwashed to think it's fun when it's really terrible.

Here's the thing, you would think Christian summer camps would be better than normal summer camps, right? A bunch of gentle little angels that sport Bibles in their backpacks at all hours of the day, tell scary stories about their dangerous encounters with non-Christians, and write letters home every Tuesday? Not so. I was scared before I went to summer camp the first year, and my Mom said ,

"They won't be mean. They're Episcopalians!"

Since then, the word "Episcopalians" to me has meant "noisy demon children experimenting with homosexuality after dark." The truth is, there is no difference between Christian summer camp and secular summer camp except that everyone is white at Christian summer camp.

Fun games. Laughing children. Singing Christian camp songs. Swimming pools. Happy people. It just sounds like hell, doesn't it? Who would actually pay to go there?!? I don't know. I'll stop talking about summer camp, though. Whenever I'm about to start talking about the evils of summer camp with friends, the only response I get is, "Ah, yes. I remember summer camp. That was fun."

Usually by the time they get to the word "fun," I'm running away with my hands over my ears screaming bloody murder. The concept of fun to me is like a crucifix to a vampire. It's the only thing that can end me.

If you really want me to be truthful, I love summer. I've just been saying these things because I wanted you guys to think I was cool. I just needed a friend.

But, very honestly, there are some things about summer I don't like. For instance, every summer my family meets in Texas in a family reunion. We stay in a bunch of cabins by a river for a week or so, and unfortunately there are other families there as well. One consists of mostly adults and toddlers. Another has grandparents, parents, and college girls, (yeah--now I have a two-year-old son in Child Services after the 2007 retreat.) The last family besides ours is a small one with a bunch of, basically, hicks from a tiny town around Austin. They're a nice group, but one of them is a seventeen-year-old emo-wannabe. He wears black jeans and t-shirts every day. Piercings. Long black hair, which he admits to using curlers on when necessary.

He's a country goth, which is nearly an oxymoron. He listens to screamo, but also pronounces "nice" as a two-syllable word. He texts all the time, but also likes feeding the goats and horses by the river. He tells me about when he cuts himself, has sex, and gets in trouble at school, yet his Texan banter is just as painfully corny as any grandparent around.

Bad memories.

Anyway, I better wrap this up. I think you all get the point.

Have a good summer!