Sargent Camp, etc.

Within the last six months or so, I sold my iBook, the computer that pushed me through college. It made it's way to SLC with me and saw some occasional use up until I bought my PC last spring. Before shipping it to its new home, I printed all the documents on it (transferring files electronically is so passe!) and was going through them tonight: I found this, which I am not sure when I wrote, but deals with a Middle School (some sort of recurring theme these days) memory at this camp. I liked this night a lot.

Sargeant Camp
One night with our peers and some sort of Australian councilor-type, we took to the woods to learn that wintergreen-flavored Life Savers really do spark in the black when biting into one, just like that old television commercial assured us they would.

We were provided with worry rocks; smoothed along the edges, allowing us to grip tight and squeeze our worries and "I'm afraid of"s from our neurotic little minds, past triceps and elbows, through fingers and finally into the New Hampshire granite. Even then, I remember thinking that this was horse shit. How could something so small not only suck all of my concerns away, but do so willingly, expecting nothing as barter but the chance to be within my hands?

You, foolishly, haphazardly, triumphantly, lost your rock along the path, and after the Life Savers had been extinguished, sweetly admitted a fear of the dark. Instead of telling you to screw, hiding my rock deeper between the lines of life and love in hopes that it would console me in the black (because I had a very similar fear), I offered you mine, just to touch your hand for a moment. It was smooth, palm-side down, grippy near your knuckles, fingers long, calcium polka-dot nails: alive, electric, real.

Then you grew too tall and I of course, didn't, and your goddamned rich parents sent you to Catholic school.