Summer Camp Superstar

 In the early 1980s I attended summer camp in the North Carolina mountains. Each year we were assigned to cabins with a counselor in charge of our well-being. The best counselors made cabin life fun. The superstar of all counselors was Skeet, a mustached, shaggy hair ex-basketball player who loved Linda Ronstadt and Jimmy Buffet. He named us the Landsharks and had me make a sign to hang above the cabin door. Skeet loved to play pranks on other counselors and often roped us into the hijinks. Once we snuck down to the lake at night and released all the canoes and kayaks into the pond because he didn't get along with the canoe counselors. Another time he pushed the limits and had us help him steal the extra deflated Blob, a massive inflatable pillow that could be anchored in the lake for kids to jump onto from a 2 story tower. He pilfered the air compressor inflation machine and we blew up the second Blob at 3 in the morning so that it looked like the original Blob had a partner. When everyone showed up at the dining hall for breakfast the whole camp was baffled. The camp director pledged to fire the counselors responsible and warned campers that they could be sent home. Skeet swore us to secrecy with spit handshakes. He used to take our cabin on overnight camping trips in the perimeters of the camp acreage. At Sheep Rock we made soggy s'mores as we cowered under the granite overhang while it rained all night. The best overnight involved hiking up the mountain to a fire ring where we sat our sleeping bags in a circle and made a small fire. As the fire died and we got settled for sleep, we heard several dogs barking in the valley. Skeet mischieviously told us it was a pack of wild dogs and instructed us to unfold our pocketknives and place them under our pillows in case we had to defend ourselves. We all shook in our sleeping bags as the barking got closer and closer. I fell asleep with my hand under my pillow and gripping my knife. Before the camp olympics happened, Skeet made us all train for a week to run the 5 K race. The whole cabin jogged everyday like Bill Murray and Chris Makepeace in the film Meatballs. We all finished respectfully in the actual race. Perhaps Skeet's ultimate prank was on us when he promised us his girlfriend, a counselor at a nearby girl's camp, would be sneaking her campers into camp to make out with us. He asked if we'd ever necked with a girl, and some guys lied and others of us asked how to do it. He gave us a few tips and marched us down to the athletic field where he sat us down on the high jump padding. He told us that was the make out spot. As a woman emerged from the woods, we all gulped nervously wondering what would happen. It turned out she was never bringing her campers, but rather arriving with pizzas for us to devour. It may have been the best pizza I ever had. I still have a photo of Skeet from the first day of camp. He had one arm around my shoulders and was pinching my chubby spare tire while he told my parents we would have fun and lose some of my baby fat. And that is exactly what happened.