Campy Reunion

Reunions on the dream road generally blend familiar and foreign, while mixing who people have been with who they could be.  The summer camp I woke up in last night seemed fairly standard in its wooded, lakeside setting, as well as in the loosely controlled chaos of K-12’ers running about the grounds.  But after a couple of quick meetings with fellow campers, it became very apparent that my subconscious was contributing an undercurrent of magic to the tent and lodge community.

When my former music teacher, Tony, dismissed my group from our morning lesson, we folded up leathery textbooks Agrippa would have loved and left with assignments to try mimicking Crowley.  Mr. Potter should be so lucky.

Then, as we lamented the shortage of players on my squad’s flag football crew, my former class- and teammate Jake arrived, plus one, to fill out the roster.  Now Jake had been a big guy in high school, but he’d puffed up even more between then and last night's camp.  And even if he’d always seemed a little self-absorbed, there was some definite weirdness to his appearing with an androgynous, ambiguous, maybe-female double of himself.  Suddenly, we had a borderline legal, all-Jake offensive line.  And the zebras couldn't find a penalty in the rulebook called "too many of the same man on the field."

But the metaphysical vibe came to a head with a former third-grade camper of mine.  First he told me about the shiny creatures living in a two-foot puddle, and then he proved it by diving in bodily to explore.  Concerned, I went to Tony -– a reasonable, flexible authority figure -– to reveal what I’d learned about the young camper.  I nearly interrupted a romantic encounter between Tony and a pre-school counselor, which would have been embarrassing under any circumstances, but I figured complaining to him about magic use would be futile while he and Miss Liplock were floating in the air on a joyful cloud labeled “9.”  It ended up being too late to discuss preventative intervention for my third-grade buddy, anyway, because he was outside getting ready to explore a dime-sized wet spot at the time.

I’ll let you guess how that went for his noggin.