The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race Read Online Free Page B

sympathetic. In truth, the whole thing hadn’t been that big of a deal. Nonetheless, my parents were exhausted and embarrassed, and to punish my brother and me, they insisted we sit beside Sam’s bowel movement for the remainder of the day.
    Which we did. We had to wait eight hours to be
allowed
to clean it up.
    THE ARRIVAL OF Officer Mehlman served as a climax in my adolescent war with my brother and led my parents to the unsurprising conclusion that they had to get rid of one of us. Only temporarily, of course. Only for the summer. Seeing as how Sam was the younger and more likable of their two children, I knew I’d be the one to go.
    I took the situation in my stride. In fact, I was really excited about it.
    All previous summers I’d been forced to attend local park district camps, hellish bogs at which underwashed counselors initiated moronic activities. They’d hand out Popsicle sticks and be like, “Make your mommy a jewelry box!” They’d demand I sing songs that asked not nearly enough of me: “Hey Sara / Someone’s calling my name /Hey Sara / I think I hear it again …”
Such
consistent insults to my vocal talents. I figured even minimum-wage employment would be a step up, and the previous summer I had accepted a position assistant-teaching geriatric water-aerobics. The students were all hard of hearing, so for an hour every weekday, I’d stand on the side of a pool opposite the teacher repeating her instructions. She’d say something like “Okay, ladies!!! Ballet legs!!! Starting on your left. One!!! Two!!!!” and I’d stand across the pool and shout, “She said, ‘Ballet legs on your left. One. Two.’ ”
    I pretty much just acted as a human microphone.
    I was not a child who loved summer. But that could change with parents desperate to be rid of me.
    I suggested overnight camp as an option, for I imagined that, unlike park district camp, the whole thing would be a sort of fairy wonderland of floral garlands and canopy beds. My mother laughed the whole thing off, though, once she learned eight weeks of overnight camp would cost in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars.
    “It’s too ridiculous for me even to be angry!” she said. “It’s
beyond
making me angry! It’s just making me laugh! Ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha, HA!”
    There was another, cheaper option: a Jewish overnight camp run by a modern conservative sect. Their pamphlet promised, “Your Chalutzim camper will return and tell you, ’Ema! Aba! I
want
to go on Ta’am Yisrael! I
loved
my Chalutzim Hebrew immersion!’ She’ll return a young woman who’s cultivated her
own
interest in Jewish themes and culture!”
    “Sounds disgusting,” said my mother. “I mean: The phrase ‘Chalutzim camper’? I want a shower just
saying
it. You?”
    I did think my mother had a point. And I did want her to shower after saying the word “Chalutzim.” At the sametime, though, I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t think of any other options.
    IT WAS APRIL of the same year the first time I heard the phrase “exchange program.”
    I’d been in my fourth-period French class when my teacher, Madame Cohen, explained the situation: We Highland Park High School students of the French language had been presented with the chance to travel to Cluses, France, a mountainous town near the country’s Swiss border. If we chose to participate, we would be assigned a Clusien host
famille
whom we would stay with for three weeks in July. At the end of those three weeks, we’d return home with our exchange students in tow. They would then enjoy the Midwestern United States for an additional three weeks.
    Madame Cohen laid out these circumstances, and asked who among us thought we might be interested.
    I pictured my brother’s feces and my demolished photo of Tyne Daly.
    I raised my hand.
    “Moi,”
I said. “I am interested.
Très
.”
    I WENT HOME that afternoon and shared the idea with my parents.
    They were initially intrigued but also concerned