Not a Happy Camper Read Online Free

nature walks and daily bunk inspections where neatness counted. But the schedule at Kin-AHurra was more like this: do anything you want any time you want, unless you just want to do nothing. And so this was how the days were passed, except that the older girls also smoked cigarettes. In my search to find the perfect camp, I had landed instead at the anti-camp.

    It was easy to like Kin-A-Hurra, if not for what it did have, then for what it didn’t. For instance, there was no public address system. In its place was an old ship’s bell hanging from a decrepit flagpole. (The idea was to raise the American, Canadian and Israeli flags, but so far we hadn’t raised anything due to the rain.) Our dedicated Head Counselor, Wendy Katz, rang that bell every hour even though we never changed activities and there was no real need for her to keep getting wet. The old wooden bunks had sheet-metal roofs and the sound of the rain pounding down on them was almost deafening, but in a pleasant, reassuring way. On the hour, the conversation would become, “Was that the bell?” “Did you hear the bell?” “What time is it?” Somehow we always knew when it was time for a meal and we’d take a break from our minimal activity and head down to the dining hall.
    The Point possessed a grace and serenity the rest of camp lacked. It was the one dry place where all of Girls’ Side regularly assembled and our high-pitched voices sweetly filled the oversized lodge. This was most evident when we sang the blessing over the food, in Hebrew, before meals. I made it a habit to keep my voice low and listen to how perfect and harmonious everyone else sounded together.
    Back home, we never thanked God before a meal. We never even thanked my mother. We just ate. Though my father was religious, he allowed us to sit down at the table and plow through the meal as fast as we could in order to get back to watching TV. My parents, seated at the two heads, rarely noticed just how quickly we ate. My father was absorbed in
The New York Times
crossword puzzle and my mother flipped through
House Beautiful
magazine. My three brothers and I were seated in between them on both sides of the table, squeezed together to make room for their reading material.

    The one exception was Thanksgiving, which was always held at Aunt Judy’s house in Jericho, Long Island, though not actually on Thanksgiving Day. Our family celebrated Thanksgiving the Saturday before because there was less traffic. As Uncle Hank finished carving the turkey with the electric knife he’d gotten from S&H Green Stamps, someone from my mother’s side would shout out, “We forgot to make a blessing!” and we’d hurriedly say one, as if we feared God might be doing a spot check.
    Meanwhile, Uncle Hank prattled on, showing off his vast knowledge of wine, which was meaningless to me as my entire frame of reference consisted of the words Manischewitz and Concord Grape. “Here, Tom,” he said one time. (He called me Tom because I was a tomboy.) “Try this,” and then laughed as I nearly gagged on his latest overpriced Merlot.
    Thanksgiving at the relatives’ was one of the few occasions when we ate out. My mother didn’t like restaurants. She didn’t like having to sit and wait. “If we were at home, we’d be done by now,” she’d say impatiently, and then scold us for filling up on bread. My mother preferred to make the food herself and then act annoyed if my brothers and I didn’t want to eat it. Once a month she’d make breaded flounder and once a month I’d practically cry, telling her how much I detested it. “Just eat it this once and I’ll never make it again,” my mother would tell me. I fell for that line for seventeen years.
    â€œOoh! Howard Johnson’s! Can we stop there?” Howard Johnson’s was the one restaurant my parents liked, bland and consistent with prompt