was a really hot, muggy August night and we were both sweaty and needed a break. I poured a few cups from the jug and gave Shari her punch and we started walking.
Usually we would not stray very far from the basketball court where the dance took place, but on this night we needed a change of scenery. With only a little over a week left in camp, many of the counselors had stopped doing their jobs and the camp was pretty much wide open.
The canteen was a place that we both had spent a lot of time with our bunkmates during the summer. In fact, the canteen was my favorite place in the whole camp, and why wouldn’t it be? The place was stocked with more candy and ice cream than a 12 year-old could eat all summer!
This older gentleman named Skip was cleaning the place and put his mop down long enough to say “Hi” to us. We nodded back and started walking away from the canteen and back to the dance. Skip called to us, “Hold up!” We stopped and he came walking over with two ice creams saying, “Chocolate Éclair and Toasted Almond?” He handed us the ice
creams, we thanked him a few times, and he went back inside the canteen.
We took our ice creams and sat on the benches that we had used so many times during the summer. Only this time, I was with my favorite ice cream and my favorite girl, all in the same place. I even took the wrapper from my bar on a stick and shot it right into a not-so-nearby garbage.
Shari was about halfway through her Toasted Almond Bar when I noticed that she had a sizeable smear of vanilla ice cream covered with toasted almond on the left side of her face. I reached over with my right hand and swept the ice cream clean off her face – she looked up as I licked the ice cream off my finger.
I don’t know what I was thinking at that moment, if anything, but I reacted in the only way my instinct told me. I leaned in and Shari met me halfway as our lips came together. The kiss seemed to last for minutes but it4 actually lasted only a few seconds. Shari rested her head on my shoulder as we both took the last bites of our ice creams. The sun was setting,
the birds were chirping, and I had never felt so at ease with my life and myself.
Goodbye
I would love to be able to say that my relationship with Shari lasted forever or at least until the end of the summer. There’s something about near-teens and teens and their relationships – perhaps couplings are as temporary as spring flowers, but we always hope they will be everlastingly.
Shari and I kissed a few more times as I dropped her off at her bunk at night, but the kisses never lasted more than a few seconds. I learned that it’s very difficult to live up to that first kiss – the magic of that initial moment of euphoria was extremely hard to duplicate.
Just when I thought everything was going great, things changed. There were two days to go in camp and cleaning house seemed to be the focal point of everyone. Maybe I was the only kid in camp that was not concerned with wiping
everything clean. I would consider my cleaning habits somewhere in between a neat freak and an actual pig in a pen.
We were having the last social of the year and I couldn’t find Shari. Usually we would come together like two magnets, but she was conspicuously missing on that night. To say that I was concerned would be an understatement – not that I’m sure what I was worried about – after all, the odds were pretty good that I would never see Shari again once we left camp 36 hours later.
About an hour into the party I saw Shari walking with this guy from Bunk 11 named Ray Parker. Ray Parker? I remember saying to some of the guys, “What is she doing walking with Parker?”
I walked outside of the social hall and a few of my bunkmates followed me. Did I miss something? Was there an e- mail, or a card, or an announcement on the loud speaker that I missed? As far as I was concerned I had a girlfriend named Shari.
She quickly put that to rest when she walked by me with that smug-faced Parker. She looked back and said, “It’s over.
I’m going out with Ray.” It made me a little sad to think that all of our great days together ended so poorly, but I had the support of my friends to get me through it.
When Parker turned around and said, “You’re x-ed, X Man.” I turned to Press and muttered, “What did he say?” My face must have turned about six different shades of red and I instantly started running toward Parker so I could take his head off.
I’m not the kind of person that resorts to fighting when I get mad – in fact, I have never used my fists to settle anything – but this display of public abuse sent me over the edge!
I was about halfway to rearranging Parker’s face, when Bruiser yelled “Albert!” I hadn’t seen Albert standing on the path between the new, happy couple and me. My eyes must have played tricks on me because I thought the large object to the left of me was a tree. When the tree moved in my path and caught me, my hot anger was mixed with a little splash of confusion.
I was still scratching and clawing by the time the rest of the guys grabbed a hold of me. The look on Shari’s face
softened as she saw how upset I was. I focused on her eyes and could see that she was wiping tears away from her eyes. Parker tried to touch her arm and console her, but she elbowed him and walked away.
When you’re 12 years old, very few things get solved between two people. From the start of any problem to its sloppy conclusion, there is usually a cast of many people that relay messages and talk sense into the main participants.
My friends ushered me back into the social hall and someone got me a Coke. Shari walked out into the main field and a few of her friends, but not Parker, followed. I saw Press walk outside and talk to Melanie, Shari’s best friend. They both turned and looked at me and Press nodded his head “yes” and put his right index up, signaling that he would be back in a minute.
Press came walking over to me and said, “Dude, she wants to talk to you.” I was still a bit stung by her hurtful treatment and replied, “I have nothing to say to her.” I walked outside and headed toward the other side of the hall, in the opposite direction from where Shari was standing. Bruiser and
Press both followed me and I picked up a rock and threw it as far as I could.
“That was flat-out mean, X” Press exclaimed. “But you should hear what she has to say,” Bruiser chimed in. “Yeah, get some closure, dude” Press added.
I didn’t know what to do – I had gone from relaxation to devastation in what seemed like a heartbeat. A few more minutes of talking by Press and Bruiser gave me enough calm to think about taking that long walk toward Shari.
Press left me and walked toward Shari and her friends – he was the most popular guy in the camp and the girls were happy to be around him. They were all smiles except for Shari, who seemed to still be upset. When the conversation stopped, Press walked away with the chatty girls and nodded at me that the coast was clear.
The walk out to Shari seemed to take as long as a marathon race, because I wasn’t sure what to expect from Shari once I got out there. My eyes barely left the ground and once I got near Shari I focused on her worn pink Adidas sneakers.
“X, pick up your head from the ground” Shari said to me as I took my last steps toward her. “Why should I?” I replied like a little kid that dropped his ice cream.
She then tried to hold me left hand in her right, but I needed a little more than that if I was going to let my guard down. “I’m sorry, X. I didn’t know what to do,” she said. I picked up my head and replied, “What do you mean?”
This time she dropped her head and started crying, “I’m gonna’ miss you.” I moved closer and hugged her as her tears moistened the shoulder of my t-shirt. “Why couldn’t you have just said that?” I asked.
We stepped back from the hug and started walking hand- in-hand. “Would it be possible of we were friends?” she inquired. I replied, “I thought we already were friends?”
“We both know that it’s gonna’ be over once we leave camp. You live in Ne
w York and I live in Pennsylvania” she stated. “Yeah I was thinking about that, too” I said. “I’m so glad that we went out. I’ll never forget you,” she stated as she stopped walking. I waited a few seconds and then replied, “I’ll never forget our first kiss.”
We then kissed and hugged for a few seconds as the group of friends nearby started clapping and cheering. Then the band of busybodies charged us with bottles and balloons filled with water and a huge water fight developed. It was a fun ending to a strange night.
Shari was right to be nervous about the end of camp. It was hard to say goodbye but we promised to write each other often. My first thought was to say “every day” but we both knew that wouldn’t happen.
The first two weeks back home we exchanged letters a few times a week. The letter writing slowed once school started and camp moved into the rear-view mirror. By the middle of October, both Shari and her letters were gone. I never saw her, or heard from her, again.
I had come so far in my social pursuits over the summer and was hoping to put some of my newfound skills to good use. But I’ll tell you that story another time…
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