The Idiot Who Ran Into A Tree: A Summer Camp Story

Chapter 11 - Kosher Style

Big Hills claimed it was a Jewish camp, but mostly it was just a regular camp with a whole lot of Jews. Actual nods to the venerated traditions of our faith were perfunctory at best.

We did begin our meals with a solid minute’s worth of prayers. We mumble-sang the HaMotzi thanking God for food, and the Kiddush thanking God for the accompanying beverage, usually a watered-down fruit punch we referred to as “bug juice.” Then — and don’t ask me why  — we segued into a hearty chorus of an old Irish drinking song that I just discovered, thanks to Mr. Internet, is called “Drunk Last Night and Sixpence.”

Then, having both appeased and confused the God of Abraham, we ate. The food was not Kosher, but something they cagily referred to as “Kosher style,” a phrase that made as much sense as calling something “vegetarian style,” and equally incompatible with the bacon they served.

And there were the Shabbat services held at the outdoor amphitheater, the Shelley Playhouse. This summer, they were led by the spindly, prematurely balding Hebrew tutor Joel. Joel spent most of his week preparing recalcitrant twelve-year old campers for their upcoming Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and each Friday night, he would drag one of them onto the stage to demonstrate their progress, voices cracking as they haltingly chanted Semitic syllables into an underpowered microphone. None of us listened, with the exception of Joel, who looked like he had a nervous tic, flinching at each sour note and mispronounced word.

The truly interesting stuff always happened away from the stage and that was especially true now, because it was the first time we got to see Cheese and Booger together since The Incident. I already knew how Cheese felt about the experience (upbeat) but what about Booger? I couldn’t imagine that she didn’t have at least some remorse. And if she didn’t feel used now, she certainly would when she heard about Cheese’s unseemly victory lap.

I sat at the end of a row by the center aisle. Gravel crunched underfoot as campers filed past, stepping down railroad tie steps in animated conversation. Emily walked past me, offering a shy little wave, which I politely returned. Since Yogi was on my right, and an aisle was on my left, this was one of the few times when Emily couldn’t magically appear next to me. Instead, she found a space a few rows down.

The service started as it always did, with Joel pleading with us to stop talking and pay attention, but it was all in vain. Joel wasn’t a rabbi, just some college kid in a yarmulke embroidered with a whimsical bright yellow smiley-face, and we did not recognize him as an authority figure. We continued our conversations in hushed tones that grew increasingly loud over the course of the service.

As this week’s victim, a pudgy twelve year old boy, walked with stiff, nervous steps towards the microphone, I heard giggling behind me. I turned and saw Cheese sitting with Booger. They were holding hands, fingers intertwined, looking into each others’ eyes, the very picture of contentment. He slyly pulled her hand in the direction of his groin and she laughed, playfully slapped his hand, and told him to stop it. Which he didn’t.

When she noticed me staring, Booger said, “Hey, Ruby,” with what I convinced myself was a tinge of embarrassment. “Shabbat shalom.” On stage, the terror-stricken boy began squawking in Hebrew as fast as he could. He just wanted his nightmare to be over.

“Uh, yeah. You, too,” I said to Booger. I noticed that her face was slightly flushed, her hair a bit disheveled. I turned back around. “The fuck?” I whispered to Yogi who could not suppress the slightest of eye rolls.

“Let it go,” he whispered back.

I didn’t say anything else for fear that Booger and Cheese would hear me, and also because Yogi and I had already been down this particular road. I had taken the position that the Cheese/Booger coupling was an epic travesty that made a mockery of Yogi's supposedly moral universe. Yogi had countered that it should make no difference to me — and here I’m paraphrasing — which part of Cheese was inserted into which part of Booger.