Camp Child

Hey team - before we get into today’s signature wackiness/pathos, I have an announcement: I’m the newest member of an improv house team at the Pack Theater! Dogs Drink Free performs every 1st and 3rd Sunday at 8pm at the Pack in Los Feliz. If you’re in the LA area, come on by and see me and my new pals make shit up on the spot that is probably funnier than anything I actually write!

And now, on this week’s nonsense. Last month, I published the first in my new “Stories from Childhood” series. Because therapy is getting too expensive, here’s some more…

We often look at childhood as an idyllic time full of innocence and hopscotch and sleepovers where nothing weird at all happens. This, of course, is bullshit. Childhood is a string of minor and major traumas that we constantly block out in order to function as adults. For me, no period of my life highlights that more than the scarring week I spent at Camp Child.

Oh, the indignities you’ll endure!

At the end of the sixth grade school year, the entire class spent a week at sleepaway camp. It was a rite of passage in our school. There was swimming, there were scavenger hunts, but most importantly - there was limited adult supervision. Sure, the teachers were there. But there were like five of them and a hundred of us. We liked those odds. Being mostly sheltered suburbanites, this was the longest most of us had ever been away from our parents. My parents were not particularly helicopter-ish. It was the 80s, after all. Neglectful parenting was very in vogue. But I certainly was well-protected from mischiefs great and small. I was both relishing and dreading a week of co-ed ribaldry.

Oh, did I fail to mention the most important part? There were going to be girls there. Girls were a recent but overwhelming interest for me. And perhaps foolishly, I felt that I had a shot to compete for their affections. While one would assume that I was what the movie Wet Hot American Summer brilliantly dubbed an “indoor kid,” this wasn’t entirely true. Yes, I was a straight A nerd, but I was also really into sports. I wasn’t good at them. But I was into them. The age of twelve was that sweet spot before I realized that the athletic kids were about to turbo charge into puberty and expose me for the uncoordinated asthmatic third-string right fielder I truly was. But at that point, the romantic playing field was still relatively open. I looked at Camp Child as my opportunity to burst into teenhood with some making out and possible over-the-sweatshirt action. Preferably with Kerry McMahon.

These days, I don’t actually remember much about Kerry McMahon other than she developed breasts earlier than most of our classmates and laughed at my jokes during Mr. Belmont’s math class. Like most males (both pubescent and sadly otherwise), that was all I needed. I was all-in on Kerry. I felt ready to throw my proverbial hat into the dating pool. Here was my understanding of how it worked: I’d tell one of my male friends that I like Kerry. That male friend would tell a female friend of Kerry’s who would pass it along to Kerry. Kerry would then express utter disgust at my existence or miraculously return the romantic interest. Then, we would be “going out” which basically meant talking on the phone for hours and never really touching each other. But Camp Child was a game changer. Anything could happen. I was cautiously optimistic until I reached trauma #1…

The group shower.

Not pictured: a creepy dude taking a picture of boys in a shower

I know this was a typical sports thing. A bunch of dudes getting into a communal shower together. But I had never experienced it. Still, no one else seemed to be bothered by the idea. So after a particularly sweaty game of Capture the Flag, I stripped down and followed the group of ten boys into the shower. That’s when Peter Lemming (who seemed to have started puberty at birth) looked at me and said: “Hey Brendan - why is your dick so small?”

How does one respond to that question? These days, I am equipped with plenty of self-effacing dick size one-liners like “Oh, I have an innie” or “ It’s a shrinky dink and it just got out of the oven” or “It’s out of season but wait til you see it at harvest time!” But on that day, I didn’t have witty comebacks. Which was just as well, because Peter wasn’t so much asking the question as setting the table for an entire group of sixth graders to point and laugh at my dick. Which they did! That part wasn’t so bad. We busted balls and took our lumps. But then, word got around camp. Traci Evers and Julie Walls sat down across from me at dinner that night and asked “So we heard you have a tiny dick.” Keep in mind - I was going through this when I was twelve! Not psychologically scarring at all!

But we Gen Xers are a resilient bunch and I wasn’t going out softly. I wasn’t going to let this ruin my shot with Kerry. Luckily, Brian Lorenzo cried when he got hit with a kickball earlier that day, so the ridicule spotlight was mercifully off my (apparently) underdeveloped junk. I made Kerry laugh a few times during the night’s Bingo game, so I think I rode out the storm. It was time to hit the tent with my bunkmate and good friend Marc Ricardo and start the courting process. I told Marc that I liked Kerry, effectively starting the telephone game that would lead from Marc to one of Kerry’s friends and eventually to Kerry and hopefully lead to happily boob-touching ever after. I went to sleep on an uncomfortable cot, not knowing that trauma #2 was awaiting me in the morning when Traci and Julie sat down across from me at the breakfast table…

“So we heard you jerked off while saying Kerry’s name in your tent last night.”

If the yurt is a-rockin’, run for your life.

First off, if you’re wondering - this wasn’t true. While the beast of a thousand Jergens bottles had been uncorked in my life earlier that year, I would neeeeeeever jerk off in the same room with someone. Then or since then. I’m not kink shaming or anything, but I was and continue to be way too Irish to consider such an overt display of sexuality. No, there was only one conclusion: Marc had betrayed me. My supposed friend had made up this lie about me to make me seem like a total creeper. But why? To be funny? Because objectively - it’s a pretty funny bit. But no - the truth came out later that week when Marc and Kerry started ‘going out.’ He was threatened by anyone else liking Kerry, so he sabotaged me by telling all the girls in sixth grade that I was a small-dicked pervert. It was brutal.

The rest of the camp was a blur. My hopes of joining the ranks of the viable sexual candidates were dashed against the rocks of mockery. There would be no boob touching for me that summer. The Lord of the Flies had played out at Camp Child and the winners and losers had been chosen. I was angry and horny and depressed - a sneak preview of the next several decades of my life. Things were not looking good for your little hero. But then - on the last night of camp - when all hope was lost, I was rescued by perhaps the single most influential moment of my life: the final campfire.

A bunch of adolescents with poor impulse control in front of an open flame - what bad could happen?

Before we left school for the year, we were given an assignment: write an essay about your experience in sixth grade. Little did we know that they were going to select a handful of us to read our essays in front of the whole class during the final campfire. And little did I know - I was the headliner. After four other kids had read their essays, it was my turn. I started reading my essay and came upon my first joke roasting Ms. Connors for crying while reading us Where the Red Fern Grows. Big laugh. Huh. That was interesting. I continued reading and kept getting bigger and bigger laughs. It was a growing crescendo. When I made fun of Mr. Belmont’s lame jokes, it was laughter and then cheering. I was killing. When I finished, I got a standing ovation. I remember having one thought:

Put. This. In. My. Veeeeins.

After the campfire, all the classmates who had been mocking me so mercilessly all week slapped my back and told me how great I was. Being funny solved everything. I was hooked. From that point on, making people laugh was going to be the primary focus of my life. And it still is. That night at the campfire was my first date with comedy and it was love at first sight. Here I am, over three decades later, trying to make you laugh right now. It’s a relationship that has outlasted every other one in my life and definitely longer than things would have worked out with Kerry McMahon, who probably married Marc Ricardo and popped out a bunch of little ice hockey players or some other violence on society.

Honestly, when I started this essay I didn’t expect it to be so hard to write. I thought it’d be a few small dick jokes and bada boom. But as I dug in, my body had a genuine fight-or-flight reaction. And I’m an adult with a great life. I won! So the next time you see a twelve-year old, try to remember your experience in an honest way. Imagine the hell they’re going through. And be kind.

Boogie Writes is a completely independent endeavor by one hard-working funnyman trying to make his way in the world today (which takes everything you’ve got.) If you like what you read, please subscribe, support, and tell a friend! Also - do you need advice? Of course you do! Send your queries to brendan@brendanboogie.com with “Dear Boogie” in the subject and get some solid or at least passable advice!