Summer

Ah, summer. Baseball, the ice cream man, getting beaten up at camp. Such memories! I was talking to a nephew of mine the other day, and he mentioned that he was going to basketball camp for the first time this summer. It reminded me of my camp days. I never went to an overnight camp, but I went to a lot of day camps. They were fun, for the most part. I don't have a ton of memories, and the ones I do have aren't good ones, but considering I went for most of my childhood, I'd have to guess the rest of the time I had fun. Once I was hit in the face with a golf club. We were playing mini-golf and I was standing behind someone who was about to putt. He, for some reason, decided to go into a full, Tiger Woods-esque back swing and smacked me in the face. The next thing I remember, I'm in the nurse's office, eating a grape popsicle. Surprisingly, my love of mini-golf only grew after that.

I went to a sports camp once, where every 'period' you got to pick between two different sports to play. That was fun, and I even got to play field hockey. I never got the hang of only being able to hit the ball with one side of the stick, but it was an experience. While there, we would sometimes have sports celebrities stop by. I remember Daryl Dawkins came by once. Dawkins was famous for having destroyed a basket during a game with a thunderous dunk. When he got there, we were all sitting around the court and he put on a dunking display. By the end everyone was chanting for him to 'break the basket!' You could tell he really wanted to, and he even asked the director if it was OK for him to do it, but the director immediately said no. Another time Jim Rice came by. He was late and only stayed for 15 minutes before he had to fly off to a game, but man, Jim Rice! He was my favorite Red Sox player at the time. A few years earlier I had stood in line for hours trying to get his autograph, but I never made it to the front of the line.

Then there was the summer I was beaten up pretty much every day. It must have been the summer between 7th and 8th grade. Now, for those of you that know me, I'm not a small person. I may not be the most intimidating man ever to walk the planet, but for the most part, people leave me alone. When I was in college, I used to have friends ask me to go into the city with them because people wouldn't come up to us for money or things like that. Even now people stay out of my way. But back then, well, apparently I didn't put the fear of anything into anyone. There were two guys, Mike and Hub. I'm not sure what Hub stood for, or if his name was just Hub. But every day, for reasons I can not remember, they would tease me or punch me in the stomach. Suffice to say, it wasn't the nicest way to spend a summer. I had friends at camp otherwise, so it wasn't a complete waste of a summer, but it wasn't the best year I had. Needless to say, I was happy when camp was over.

I went to a private school for junior high and high school. At the time, 7th and 8th grade was held on the lower campus, and 9th thru 12th grades were held on the upper campus. Every October we had our version of homecoming, which was held on the upper campus. So October rolls around and me and my friends are on the upper campus celebrating when, from around the other end of the soccer field, who do I see walking towards me? Yes, that's right, Mike and Hub. I could not believe my eyes. Did they actually go to my school?? I suddenly had visions of getting my ass kicked every day in high school. They walked over to me and sat down in the grass next to me and started talking to me like we were best friends! I could not figure out what the hell was going on. It turns out Mike has just started high school at my school (which is why I hadn't seen him before) and Hub was just visiting. They both apologized for their behavior during the summer and laughed it off as 'one of those things.' I wasn't convinced, and at least I didn't have to run into them the rest of the year.

The next school year started and Mike and I were on the same campus. As it turned out, he was a nice guy. During the three years we were in school together, we ended up being friends and playing tennis together. Until an incident towards the end of my junior year. Mike and I, along with most of our friends, all hung out backstage (yes, I was a drama nerd/geek/whatever) and we were roughhousing, as boys will do. I had Mike in a front face lock and he started to shove me back into the wall. Well, when you have someone in a front face lock and you're being shoved back into a wall, your back isn't the first thing that'll hit the wall. The person's head you're holding will. So Mike shoved me back and smacked his head against the wall. I guess he didn't like that feeling and blamed me for it, because when he regained his senses, he shoved me and wanted to fight me. Now, this all took place before school had started for the day. And that morning we had an assembly in the auditorium, so people were walking by us on the way there. And I'll be damned if half of them didn't walk by me and whisper 'kick his ass!' I'm not sure I could have kicked Mike's ass, but I would have given him a good run for his money. Throw in the fact that back in 8th grade I had knocked a friend of mine cold with one punch, and I wasn't looking forward to a fight. Contrary to what you might think, knocking someone to the ground isn't all that exciting. So we stood there, staring at each other for a couple of minutes, before I walked away.

We didn't speak much after that. But I kind of like to think that head vs. wall smackdown was a little bit of payback for what he had done to me years earlier. I mean, I knew what was going to happen when he shoved me backwards and I didn't let go. Hmm... :-)