How Drugs Ruined Summer Camp

When I was growing up I was generally naive about, well, everything. I remember looking at the anti-drug pamphlets they handed out during my sixth grade health class and being utterly confused. The pages of the pamphlets were littered with illustrations of people under the influence of alcohol and various illegal substances, people with spirals for eyes and shaky hands. The little informational handbooks neglected to mention that drugs and alcohol sometimes made people feel good before they turned their eyeballs into trippy corkscrews and set their hands a-trembling. According to these pamphlets, all drugs did was make people feel terrible and ruin their lives. Why would anyone want to do something like that, I wondered?

Boy, I thought, some people sure were dumb.

The following summer I attended a two week-long horseback riding camp. The oldest girl in my bunkhouse was inarguably the coolest, most badass girl at camp. She'd had boyfriends, she was obsessed with Kurt Cobain, and she wore her bangs long over her face so that they always hid one of her eyes. After lights-out every night she would lie in her top bunk and preach to us about music and sadness. She'd tell us about stupid girls that she'd made fun of from her school and explain to us why we should hate cheerleaders, grownups and Courtney Love.

One evening she was reciting from memory some of the choicest bits from her seventh grade yearbook profile. She wrapped up the tale with the quote she'd chosen to go beneath her picture: "If I were a mushroom I'd want to be laced, even though lace is too girly for me."

A-ha, I remember thinking, here's my chance. If I could say something funny and blasé, all the girls in the bunk would see that I was totally cool and world-weary too!

"Ugh, I think mushrooms are gross," I said, "My mom has them on her pizza all the time but they, like, seriously make me gag. Total yuck."

There was an awkward silence. Then Jaded-long-bangs called across the room to me, "I was talking about magic mushrooms, you retard."

The rest of the girls in the bunkhouse giggled. I was mortified.

For the rest of my two-week stay at camp, I blamed my humiliating mushroom faux pas for my official loser status. This was perhaps for the best, though, as it allowed me to remain ignorant of a number of other contributing factors. Example:

My favorite outfit while at riding camp:

Skintight beige stretch pants and a vest that portrayed scenes from a thrilling foxhunt!