Camp Jane

When I was sixteen years old, I had been pen-palling with a little big-cheeked twelve-year-old girl for nine months, and I ran into her parents at a Homeschooling Convention, which was about like meeting a potential romantic interest unexpectedly in Wal-Mart after they have been “dating” you exclusively through Skype. (Not that I would know anything about that, of course: I am staunchly opposed to webcams, given that they add approximately six million pounds, circles around the undersides of my eyes, and provide an extra-creepy view at the bedroom wall behind me.) Awkward. The dad in the family, whom we’ll call the Joneses here because I love being cliché like that, interrogated me about everything: how was I holding up in school? How did I find time to write letters? Did I play any instruments? I answered these questions, and then I spontaneously uttered the words that would change their lives forever: “How about if your family comes to our house for a few days?”

I was sixteen, remember, and a hermit, and I was trying very hard to reach out to my friend’s father, on the vague impression that my answers had not pleased him, and that he was about to restrict his little darling from ever wasting another postage stamp on me again. I was incorrect about all of this, since the man immediately agreed, and said that he had seen my father someplace, and said numerous other things that culminated in me having to go explain to my parents that I had just invited a family of eight to stay at our house for an extended weekend.

When they showed up, the Joneses all piled out of a car, and I presented them with carefully-made memorabilia I had created just for the occasion. I made the girls aprons with their names on the front, I made the boys hats with their names on the back, and I had a large booklet with our schedule for the next three days entirely planned out. It said, CAMP JANE. Actually, it didn’t say Camp Jane, since my real name isn’t Jane, but whatever. I had poured three weeks of love & affection into these books, and by golly I was going to make sure we did everything I planned. I had a game night in the works, a group birthday party one night (in case anyone’s birthday had generally been skipped over for any reason) and field trips every day. This poor family was never going to know what hit them.

Camp Jane didn’t turn out like I expected, but I was right that the family was never going to know what hit them: after we took them fishing, visited a museum, watched a movie, and stuffed them full of spaghetti and semi-tossed salad, they all came down with a violent stomach flu, one by one, until by 1:00 AM the next morning, everyone was laying all over our living room, while I held puke buckets for a house full of complete strangers. I have never really been able to find a way to describe how unfortunate that weekend was. This went on until their planned three-day visit turned into a four-and-a-half day languishing, and I found out more about those people than I ever wanted to know, while they had burst blood vessels and repeatedly heaved into little buckets I proffered tentatively in an outstretched hand.

I guess it was the oddest first meeting between families of all time, but by the end of that fiasco WE WERE BEST FRIENDS. We have taken summer vacation together for the better part of ten years, driven across the state to hang out together several more times a year, and have generally become inseparable besties. We always laugh about the week I planned to make friends and ended up making them in a totally different way, and now Camp Jane is a byword.