Hi, Danny!

Do you remember when I wrote this?:

"...For most of the years I worked there, the Barn Manager was a girl named Cathy Barry. I just googled her, and apparently there is a British porn star who shares her name. That isn't her. Our Cathy Barry was The Shit. Frizzy brown hair; sturdy, mannish legs and hands; freckles all over her moon-shaped face; and a voice like Joe Pesci's would have been if he were ever a 20-year-old girl. She smoked Marlboro Reds by the carton, drank White Russians every night, went to UMaine Orono, drove a 1973 Cadillac Fleetwood that used to be a hearse, and slept with the cutest, nicest boy in the entire camp. He was three years younger than her -- which is a bigger deal at 20 than it can be at 39 -- but she didn't care. Picked him out of the lineup much the same way Angelina Jolie chose Brad Pitt: 'I'll take that, thank you very much.' And he went along with her the same way, too: a bit stunned to be chosen, but thrilled pantsless nonetheless..."


Well, a few weeks ago -- purely coincidentally and not because of the above post whatsoever -- that Cutest, Nicest Boy found me on Facebook. I sent him the link to the above post, and he says he thinks Cathy Barry might still have his pants. He was kidding, of course, but I love him for saying it. I've emailed him a few times, we've talked on the phone a few times, and we're going to get together soon, I swear to god. But in the meantime, he's brought all these camp memories flooding back into my head, so I thought I'd share a few of them with you all.


Danny (that's Cute Nice Boy's real name) said he's still in touch with another of our friends from camp, a boy that we called Squidd. With two d's. I don't know why, on either count. Every girl in our camp was in love with Squidd, and I actually "went out" with him for a couple days when we were twelve years old. I was a CIT that year and he was still a camper, but I don't think it counts as sexual harassment because the most intimate we ever got was the day he let me wear his sneakers. They were way too big for me, but all the other girls were jealous, so I wore them all day long, tripping over them till campers's bedtime, at which point he made me give them back.

We used to keep in contact across the camp (not me and Squidd, but all of us) with a system of walkie-talkies. There was one out at the riding rings, one at the waterfront, etc., and they were supposed to be specifically for emergencies. If, say, somebody fell off her horse, you radioed down to the office and asked them to dial 911. The walkie-talkies were Serious Business, and you weren't even supposed to use them to ask someone to bring you cigarettes. But later, when Squidd was a counselor, he used to somehow commandeer one to carry on his person, and he would use it to broadcast pretend football games involving all the staff.

They were amazing. Off the top of his head (at least I always assumed they were off the top of his head -- if I should find out now he planned them ahead of time I will be sorely disappointed), he would call what sounded like an honest-to-god gridiron matchup with all our names in it. We never knew when it was coming. The walkie-talkie would just crackle to life and we would hear "It's third and seven with two minutes to go..." and we'd send up a shout and gather round like it was old-time radio -- though somebody, I'm sure, was still paying attention to the kids. We'd listen for our own names and beam with pride at our on-field feats as if they had been real. "Ellia is going, going... Here comes Cathy Barry for the block but Oh! Nobody can stop her! And now Ellia has run sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five yards for TOUCHDOWN!" Wooooooooo!!!!!! Yay, me! You'd get congratulated in the mess that night and everything.

I have more camp stories, but this post is getting long, so I'm going to end it here and write more later. Right now I just have to add two more quick things:

1. Danny says that the last he knew, Cathy Barry was the head of sheep research at Tufts University. Please, learn from my example. Remember what I said before about there being a British porn star that shares her name, and do NOT google +"Cathy Barry" +sheep. I'm still having nightmares...

2. Danny sent this picture:

I told you I used to have a Flock of Seagulls haircut! I just haven't seen a picture of it in a while. Yeesh.