Free Not a Happy Camper by Mindy Schneider

our energy and attention on the play. With the exception of meals, sleeping and running to Boys’ HQ to use the bathroom, we spent all of our time in the social hall. My bunkmates and I brought along cards and jacks and taught the boys how to play since their chosen indoor activity, floor hockey, was deemed too noisy and disruptive during rehearsals. I tried to get close to Kenny, complimenting him on his voice and how well it blended with Autumn Evening’s soprano. “She’s okay,” he said, “but I wish Dana was playing Liesl.”
    â€œCan you believe it?” I commented to Autumn Evening one night on the truck ride back to Girls’ Side. “He doesn’t get it. He keeps on chasing after someone who just isn’t interested.”
    â€œIt’s the story of the ages,” my bunkmate assured me.
    After a few days of being rebuffed, Kenny gave up and found an excuse to get out of the social hall, volunteering to go down to the Arts & Crafts shack to help make the flats for the scenery. During a lengthy choreography session for
So Long, Farewell (Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu
), during which my part was to stand off to the side and nod my head as each child exited, I sneaked out and went down to see if I could help, too. The Arts & Crafts shack was full of girls, several of them fawning over Kenny, but that wasn’t going to get in my way. Philip Selig was going to get in my way. He was the only other boy there and when he saw me come in, he practically lunged across the table to strike up a conversation.
    â€œHad any good schnitzel with noodles lately?” he asked.
    â€œNot exactly one of
my
favorite things,” I replied.
    The sad truth was, I found Philip fascinating. He had the best memory of anyone I’d ever met and could recite the entire Gettysburg Address, the American Dental Association’s message on the backof the toothpaste tube and all of the countries in the world in alphabetical order, but I did not want to flirt with him. I wanted to help Kenny pound nails.
    Before volunteering my skills, I noticed that the two boys were doing the carpentry and the girls were doing the artwork. This was so typical. On Girls’ Side we were forever stringing beads and making sand candles while the boys got to do the good stuff. Here on Boys’ Side, they made Centauri model rockets and shot them off in the middle of the softball field, next to the Giant Teepee. Because the field was surrounded by woods on three sides and by the lake on the fourth, once a rocket was launched, its designer was unlikely to get it back. Eventually, they realized that building rockets was a waste of time and switched to gluing used Popsicle sticks to the engines, not caring what happened after take-off.
    â€œGot any more green?” I asked. Afraid to flaunt my strength and coordination once again in front of Kenny, I grabbed a brush and joined in painting pictures of shrubbery, while ignoring Philip and gazing at the object of my so-far-unrequited love.
    Dana lost her voice the day before the performance which caused Rhonda Shafter to smoke a fourth pack of Salems and pull me aside and ask, “Darling, do you know Dana’s lines? The words to the songs?”
    I did. I could recite everyone’s lines from the play as well as several choice scenes from
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
, the entire
Haftorah
portion from my Bat Mitzvah and, like Philip, the verbiage from the back of a tube of toothpaste.
    â€œIf she doesn’t get her voice back, you’re the singing nun.”
    â€œReally?” I questioned her. “Would it be that big a deal if we just waited until tomorrow night or the next night or whenever she got it back? I mean, that only seems fair.”
    â€œKiddo,” she told me, “show biz ain’t about what’s fair.”

    It was like something out of an old black and white movie or a miracle from the Bible—or at least it might have been