I'm Not Playing

The music is the only part I wish to remember, though it’s all in me whether I like it or not. I was a bratty, misunderstood, angsty, irritated child; but I had my reasons to be. 10-year-olds aren’t supposed to learn about porn until they’re in their teens. 

Pop ruled the 2000s, as it had for every decade before that, back when even The Beatles was considered to be that genre. Katy Perry, Rhianna, Maroon 5 (even after their first album Songs About Jane which, according to my brother and everyone else, was their only good album), Taylor Swift, and all the other greats. The pool speakers blasted out their melodies and beats like a siren call to the deadly rock. I never drowned, though, because I didn’t get the green wristband until I could swim.

At the beginning of each summer, we would line up at the laps section of the sprawling (for a child) aquatic center before that part of the Wheeling Park District opened for all the regular customers. I didn’t learn to swim until I was 10, neither did my desire to try, so I accepted the red wristband without any complaining. A couple of the years, the accessories were translucent instead of opaque, making them a glory amongst the day-campers and even leading to an Al Capone-style trading ring if memory serves correctly.

When I finally upgraded to green and opened up the whole park to myself, I sometimes still stuck to the shallow section, hanging out with some people or going down the dolphin slide made for toddlers that I still fit through. Standing behind the waterfall was a wonder, the aqua flourishing down the artificial drop. There were a couple slides next to it, but the lines were always so long. One even necessitated an inner tube which there were only ever eight of, it seemed.

There was a volleyball court which I ignored and a small pool housing basketball hoops and a lillypad obstacle course on the other half. I’ve never enjoyed sports, but even if I did, the water still met my chin as I stood. Mastering the lily pads after a couple summers, the enjoyment eventually wore thin. 

The little waterpark, also for toddlers, never lost its charm, though. The little slides looped and curved around the structure as the big bucket at the top threatened you with a fluid meltdown. Small pieces of rope and other twisty-gears made for fun pranks against friends, unloading a cup’s worth of water onto them from above. 

When I didn’t feel like getting too wet, I ventured to the sandbox. Always careful to never get too grainy, I crouched as I built mediocre sandcastles, trying to add decoration one time by drizzling wet sand onto the structure, the dark brown not at all complimenting the beige. 

We weren’t allowed to sit on the chairs. Those were for the real customers, as if our parents weren’t paying for us to be there. It was either air-dry or slap yourself down on a thin pool towel that was no match for the tough concrete. When time was up, we’d all go down to the main building and change in the bathrooms.

Little boys don’t like seeing each other’s penises, especially not in the era when bisexuality was becoming cool but gay was still bad and kids didn’t know about bisexuality anyways. If you were first in line, you could jet to a stall. The only other options included kneeling under the sinks, sitting behind the trash can, or simply trying not to think about the situation. We were on a timer for that as well. I only got around to asking how much we had left in the pool during my last year when my sense of reality increased, so before that I was left furiously drying off my thighs which seemed eternally damp no matter how hard I worked at them. In the hallway sat a couple vending machines, which I tried and failed to hack through using some fake code found from a random YouTube video.

Afterwards came lunch in the scattered campus tents. Either my anxiety disorder was ramping up one summer or I just don’t have the stomach to eat in ninety-degree weather. Either way, I swear I threw up almost every day in those dirty, dark gray trash cans.

One counselor-in-training tried to console me a bit that year. Each camp group had their own CIT, an early-to-mid-teenager who apparently did not get paid to work there, but rather paid $300 themselves and then got to go to Six Flags at the end of the summer. Jade, who I would later encounter again in high school, told me a story that I have trouble remembering, though notes of domestic violence ping in my brain when I try to recollect. Another CIT one summer tickled me a lot, squeezing my ribs and even saying one day, “Oh no, I’ve tickled all the tickles out of him.” Her red hair was always frizzy. 

In that same area of campus, the town eventually built a police station at the far end that lined the main street. The camp groups protested one day, though I had no energy to do so, for we never went on that side anyway and, most importantly, it was a police station, not an oil rig. Conversations about Sour Patch Kids took place during this protest, as well as a tried and failed attempt to catch a single ball of Trix cereal in my mouth which fostered a split-second choke-out until I cough-spat that damn neon piece of corn out, out, out.

There was a dragonfly swarm one day which I enjoyed with a new friend, Annabelle. We both loved Pokemon and played the trading card game (completely incorrectly) at Clubhouse, the after-main-hours program for kids who had parents that worked regular hours. One time a kid complimented me on my basketball shoes which I only bought because they looked cool. In those two multipurpose rooms I developed my aversion to sour cream and onion chips as well as cherry Capri Sun. On days they only had that flavor, I disgustingly resorted to drinking water as my bottle of Propel, Gatorade, or just plain soda had tapped out by the end of the day. Pop! went my water bottle full of Fanta from the heat, the top jumping off like a mighty grasshopper.

Karina, an older girl I was friends with, hung out with her same-age friends during Clubhouse. It’s funny looking back on them thinking they were so mature as they weren’t older than 12 and still played board games, Heads Up 7 Up (I despised that one), colored, and made interesting desserts like the rest of us.

However, one of the boys used a cup of crayon shavings not for coloring, but to demonstrate the occurrences of a YouTube video he’d come across. I fled the scene, gagging. 2 Girls 1 Cup will forever go down as one of the most infamous videos on that platform, especially in the early days when the algorithm was wildly inconsistent. That unsophisticated programming passed around that video like some cursed tape from The Ring. 

I had my own taste in YouTube content at the time that didn’t align with fetish porn. Where one finds pop music, they will find pop music parody videos circa 2010. One creator did a recreation of the ridiculed phenomenon “Friday” that he deemed “Slutty Friday.” Informing my counselor of that funny video I’d just seen, she informed me that slut was a bad word. 

When the end of the day rolled around, the kids who were left went down to the large gym. Sometimes we played Thunder, but I preferred Lightning because I could get back in. 

One time they had to call my parents because they were so late. Another time I was left with only a few kids when my mom finally showed up. Another camper was crying because he missed his mom, so mine did the nice thing and consoled him, wrapping him in her arms as he wept and hollered. When we left, I said in the hallway, “That makes me pissed off.” She informed me that was also bad language to use. On days my dad picked me up, he’d sometimes get me a Hershey’s bar or bag of Ruffles from the vending machine. 

Various activities lined the days in-between pool time and leaving time. We had the classics like Duck Duck Goose; the forbiddens like plucking grass out of the ground; and the ultimates like Sharks and Minos; Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines; Red Light, Green Light; and Red Rover. 

But one day when we were playing kickball against the counselors, I was having none of it. I huffed and puffed in all of my couldn’t-be-more-than-4-foot-6-glory and stood firm in my resolution: there’s no way to win, so I’m not playing. One of the counselors took me around to some other camp groups to see if I wanted to play with them, and I countered those offers with crossed arms. He eventually took me to the head guy’s office where my brother was also there with an ear infection.

There was a tiny spark, however. I got to pass out the wristbands one time, in a play at least. The camp put on a talent show where in my group, I got to play my sassy counselor. At the end while we were sitting in the audience, I asked if I could perform a song. She said no, and thank the raining heavens she did, for I hadn’t known all the lyrics to “This is Me” from Camp Rock like I thought I had. Though, I did step up to teach the Hoedown Throwdown choreography from the Hannah Montana movie on another day because the counselors were getting it completely wrong. 

While my dad and I were getting school supplies after camp was over, I found that counselor as the Walgreens cashier, not understanding why she had both jobs. Her face seemed droopy, not the usual high-energy camp version, though she was never a faker to begin with. It was nighttime as well. 

In that same stage, not during a performance, I was hanging out with some older kids again behind the curtain, and promptly fled when they began discussing Bloody Mary. 

Sometimes we hiked all the way to the playground that felt like miles and miles and miles away. My feet sweat in my white ankle socks as I pushed one foot in front of the other, finally making it. Others ran or skipped; I trudged. One time there, a counselor showed me a funny video of The Count from Sesame Street, though the objects he named were bleeped out to simulate him saying fuck. Two! Two *beep* on the wall. He’d meant to say candles. 

We’d end the day, before Clubhouse, where we began, at the main hill next to the parking lot. A towering gazebo filled to the absolute brim with wasps shadowed the grass. Goose poop lined the tree mulch which one kid fake-putted in his mouth, an image that still makes me shudder. At the start of summer, counselors held up posters with their names. We all met our groups. Chance taught me that some people’s names could be words; Mercedes taught me that making fun of someone else’s name doesn’t remove the hurt from my own last name (I later apologized to her in high school, which she accepted but was never impacted by in the first place); and Star taught me about adoption when her parents came to pick her up one day and I pointed out that they were white, while she was Black. “I’m adopted,” she’d said plainly. 

Everyone got in line, the groups would scatter across campus and play some games, then we’d all meet on the hill by the pool. Us kids lined up at the rope-gate after setting our stuff down, eager to race into action. One time, a counselor teased us by jumping off the diving board and flashing his toned back while doing so. The speakers were just sputtering into life as a couple kids passed by me, brother and sister with Village of the Damned bleach-blonde hair that brilliantly contrasted their ultra-tan skin. 

A counselor let down the rope, and we ran.