Rum Pa Pum Pum

I have noticed an interesting trend. When I talk about sin I get FAR more traffic then when I entreat you to help an adorable little moppet raise money for charity. Have you people no souls?

I thought not.

Let's talk about sin again then.

Hop back into the Way Back Machine to a time in the mid eighties, when cool girls did their hair like this

(that's me on the left)

It was a time, when I lived in the Wild, Wild West and my most dreaded chore was having to Walk the Dinosaur. It was a time when I had yet to experience Losing My Religion.

Each summer, I would load up with my church youth group and travel to the wilds of Camp Lyle McLeod to experience the (trauma) of Girls Camp. There is a song that goes in parts 'Girls camp, is the very worst place in the world! The worst place for every living girl! The best place for losing all your curl'. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's NOT how it goes, but that's how we sang it because Girls Camp was a desolate waste land free of curling irons and Aqua Net where you had to wear a ONE PIECE bathing suit! even though you were like, TOTALLY working on your tan.

But it was a right of passage that simply couldn't be avoided. You went and you liked it, or, if you were like me, you packed your sleeping bags stuff stack with things like plastic wrap, icy hot and rubber snakes so that those around you were exactly, perfectly aware of your standing on being drug off to the middle of nowhere where you were subjected to things like DIRT and BUGS and NO BOYS and WASHING YOUR HAIR IN THE LAKE. It was hell, I tell you.

Now, don't get the impression that I didn't like "camp". I loved camp. I loved the part of camp that was being away from your mother and staying up late and walking to the mess hall and canoeing, all the things I knew from the summer camp that was my reward for not actually killing my sisters during the school year. Girls Camp on the other hand meant having my mother mere feet away, going to bed at dark, cooking our own food and having to walk three miles around the lake to the swimming dock. Not so delightful. Especially the year that Rachel first came to camp.

Rachel was a very, very sheltered child. She'd literally never spent a single night away from home. And because my mother was assistant camp director that year it was decided that I should be "buddied" with Rachel to "show her the ropes". So Rachel was assigned to my cabin, to my bunk bed, to my KP rotation, to my "duties" rotation, to my rec rotation. Basically she was up my ass and seriously cramping my sneaking-off-to-meet-the-boy scouts-from-the-next-camp action. And that was totally unacceptable. Rachel, clearly, needed to be punished.

Rachel, it was learned the first night, was terrified of the dark. I, on the other hand, am a ninja-like nymph of the night. At about 1am, Rachel began to whimper. Tell me a story or something she begged and so I complied.

"Well, you know how we like, totally passed the prison?" I began (we had) "Like, ten years ago, a guy like escaped from the prison and he was supposed to like, meet his ride on the highway and stuff? And their signal was he was going to croak like a frog, only he got lost and wound up down by the lake"

Our lake? She whispered

"Yeah, so anyway, these girls were here for Camp? I think they were from 9th ward? And they snuck out to like go to the boys side? Only, when they were walking along the lake they came across the escaped murder? And he like, TOTALLY freaked and killed them? And then threw their bodies into the lake?"

Then what happened? she moaned

"Well, the counselors heard the girls screaming? And one of them caught the guy, only as he tried to run away he like tripped? And broke his neck. And they say that his spirit still haunts these woods and croaks like a frog looking for his ride."

It does? she was totally buying all of this

"Yeah, and on the anniversary of the girls death, you can see their flash lights shining up from the lake looking for revenge"

At this point, she starts to wail and the counselor comes running to see whats the matter. All Rachel could sniffle out was that she was scared of the frogs, so Tina brought over her stereo but OF COURSE Rachel couldn't listen to "secular" music and the only other music to be found was a recording of the "Little Drummer Boy" back to back on both sides of the tape. Which played ALL DAMN NIGHT.

That, of course, made me even MORE annoyed. So the next night I snuck around until I'd stolen 3 flashlights, then crept into the mess tent and lifted a box of Ziploc bags. Quietly, I slipped into the lake and one by one splashed the flashlights into the lake where the frogs where the loudest.

When all of the adults were asleep and the little drummer boy was on his 8th march through the night, I whispered for Rachel to follow me. Quietly we crept down the path, Rachel trailing, whimpering behind me.

The closer we got to the lake the louder the frogs got until we pressed through the last of the bushes and there, floating just below the surface were the ghost lights.

Naturally Rachel started screaming her head off, took of running and whacked her head onto a low hanging tree branch. Counselors descended on us from all directions, hushing and soothing Rachel as I snuck off into the shrubs and crept back to my bunk. Where I "sleepily" awoke as Rachel was ushered back to bed, moaning about the frogs. The rest of camp, she never left the counselors side and the next year she opted not to return.

I was free to once again sneak off to steal Hershey bars and make out with pimply boys.

The only reason I'm not already in hell is because I'm helping Emma. You should be too!