2003-07-01
Sister Mary Breathe In Jesus
People I know go camping. Why? Why do they do this to themselves? What's fricking WRONG with them?
Nature and I don't mix. The Great Outdoors is total bullshit. My idea of camping is a hotel that doesn't have a built-in hairdryer or an in-room coffeemaker.
My hate-hate relationship with camping began in third grade when the geniuses who ran my elementary school thought it would be a grand idea to get us city kids out of our nice comfy environment and send us to HELL. They were Catholic nuns, so this was bound to happen. This was Back in The Day when adults were allowed to transport other people's kids in their cars without having to worry about getting their asses sued off if a kid got a paper cut while in their care. The ride to camp was the one and only highlight of the trip. My parents were ultra involved in my whole school life, so they were ubiquitous, especially when it came to field trips. Because my parents were chaperones and drivers, I was allowed to choose who would ride in my car. And because my parents practically ran the school, I chose FIRST. It's all about ME, remember?
I won't bore you with the details of this excursion into nature, but here's what happens when you take a bunch of city kids into the forest: Missy was whittling with a pocket knife (Back in The Day when a kid could play with a pocket knife and not sue the shit out of the pocket knife company when the following happens) and stabbed herself in the leg. Ian bashed his head open in the Bear Caves. There was a lot of falling and getting hurt in general.
To make matters worse, my parents hauled my ass back to the city every night of The Trip I Would Have Been Happier Not Going On so I could perform in my shiny dance recital. Lucky, lucky me.
You'd think the Geniuses would have figured out that city kids going camping was a big fat hairy mistake. But no. In sixth grade, they made us go again. With the fifth graders. We had this crunchy granola teacher and her husband (who my dad called Bert the Old Sea Dog, because, well, his name was Bert and he looked like an old sea dog) who loved to camp. When I found out about this nightmare, I wanted to scream, "Don't force your hippie lifestyle on ME, tree hugger!" But I didn't cause it was Catholic school and they would have whooped my ass good for that comment. Once Sister Angela gave me and Kelsey a spanking just because we got a drink of water without permission. Okay, we were spitting the water at each other in the hall and cackling like a couple of hens but that's not the point...
So they drag us bodily to another campground. We didn't even get little cabins this time. We all had to sleep on the floor up in the loft of this big multi-purpose building. My Holly Hobbie sleeping bag looked quite out of place next to all the L.L. Beanish numbers my classmates' parents had purchased because Buffy and Skip just had to have the best of everything (she says through clenched teeth). At least on this trip I didn't have to pee in an outhouse.
The only major catastrophe I remember about this extravaganza of nature is this fifth grader named Ross who got stuck in what we all thought was quicksand but was probably just a big ass pile of mud. He was screaming like a girl and Bert the Old Sea Dog got a big stick and pulled his crybaby ass out. Ross was one of those kids with a big shot lawyer dad who gave a lot of money to the school. Ross didn't act like his shit didn't stink at school anymore after his little quicksand rendezvous.
Apparently my teachers were atoning for some horrible sins they committed because when I was in eighth grade, they decided to take the ENTIRE JUNIOR HIGH camping. All the seventh and eighth graders. What the frick were they thinking? We were hell on toast. They should have known this when in June of the previous year, we pulled stunts like Everybody Turn Their Desks Around and Hum For the Duration of Social Studies Class. Mr. K ignored us and said, simply, "Humming will not be on the exam." We threw poorly drawn cartoons of him through the window over the door of his classroom daily. (This was also the year that Julie told everyone my white shirt looked like a napkin and was pseudo, so I got the entire junior high to gang up on her and give her hell until she apologized to me at the school dance. Don't fricking mess with the napkin-shirted bitch, people.) We passed notes making fun of our English teacher's husband who, rumor had it, was missing a leg. We made a habit at the beginning of every English class of running top speed to the back row of the classroom so we could giggle and pass notes for an hour. After about 30 minutes, Mrs. G would yell, "Marie...Rebecca...MOVE" and send one of us to sit in the hall where we would take that opportunity to flirt with ninth grade boys who walked by on their way to the loo. Once she made the mistake of getting into a debate with me about my behavior in class and I was sent to the hall following a comment that went something like this: "Well, you could just put my chair on a revolving pedestal in the middle of the classroom so I can observe my subjects at all times." She was not amused.
I think they knew this camping trip would be a great punishment.
The usual begging to stay home didn't work and we all went camping. My dad and Seana's dad were chaperones, but we didn't even get the benefit of the Passenger Choosing Ceremony, because they hauled our asses to camp on a big yellow bus. Woo hoo.
We had cabins this time. Cabins whose floors were covered in turds. Little tiny round droppings everywhere. One of the boys' cabins was infested with some sort of flying insect and the entire campground smelled like eggs. Holly and I were into screaming "You lucky sow" to get the boys' attention at this phase in our adolescence, and we ran from cabin to cabin yelling it in the windows and running away. Boy were we smooth.
This trip was injury free, because by this time in our lives we expended our energy in psychological torture rather than childish physical stunts. We spread rumors that the teachers in Cabin 8 were drunk off their asses on vodka every night (and how could we sneak some of that?) and tried to make the seventh grade girls mad by flirting with their boyfriends. We were having mad fun, until...
Sister Breathe In Jesus showed up. Her name was really Sister Mary Something. All the nuns had these girl-boy names which probably explains their overall gender-bending style. Names like Sister Mary Robert and Sister Angela Fred and other such crap. Sister Breathe In Jesus was our religion teacher. She was short and squat and looked like a troll doll. At the beginning of every class she performed this meditative little chant where we had to breathe deeply. She said we were breathing in Jesus and exhaling our evil thoughts and deeds. And she brought this routine of hers to camp. It sucked all the fun out of what we were doing and filled us with the guilt that haunted our every normal and age-appropriate move.
But, alas, the laws of karma and sweet justice do prevail. The years of pleasure she derived from infliciting major guilt on our asses was about to be repaid.
I'm in the outhouse, waiting for Holly to finish peeing, when I hear this violent sound. It's loud and foul and hilarious and it's someone farting the biggest gassiest nastiest farts I've ever heard in my time on this planet so far. I am peeing my pants laughing and yelling, "Oh man, Holly, that is DISGUSTING! I can't believe you are FARTING like that! You are such a PIG! HOLLY! STOP! STOP! That is SO GROSS! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
And from the next stall, a small voice, one that sounded like it just breathed in a whole bunch of Jesus, said, "That was me."
I fricking love camping.
joeparadox at 9:30 a.m.