How I wish I could fact check with a time machine! As with many formative strong childhood memories, music swirls in and out of the narrative. The music sticks to the part of the memory that is pleasant; the rest of the memory is not orchestrated.
I went to a summer camp in the hills of North Carolina because my mother had been a counselor and loved the experience. The red clay earth and rolling hills…so different from my home in south Florida it might as well have been Mars, not just three states up.
There are two core memories of that summer that shaped me significantly. They are interlinked and all the events feed on each other to help create the mixed tape that is Moi.
Both events probably would have happened without the first mistake, but it did add a certain tragic, comedic flair. All good time travel lore tells us if you remove even one event, the space time continuum falls like a house of cards. Perhaps that’s just a story device, but as far as fictional devices go, I can see how the events in our lives are like a giant game of Jenga.
Mom’s mistake: She sent me off without a single cent of pocket money—not an ever-lovin’ shekel. I remember the frenzy of making sure everything had my name on it. The hustle when she realized even my underwear needed the iron on name tape. Yet, she skimmed over the part that said the campers would need some cash for incidentals.
This was an upscale sleepover camp with excursions. The first bus trip was ruby mining. We stopped for snacks, drinks, and souvenirs. I sat on the bus while my contemporaries got out for all manner of amusement. I was as livid as a ten-year-old can be. I remember anger and embarrassment and some tears of frustration but as I was already the camp pariah (more on that forthcoming) I tried my best to just sit quietly. This event has no musical pairing. Unless you count the death march my mind was playing for my mother.
Pre cell phones and answering machines I could not get a hold of her. I remember the Snoopy doghouse stationary with matching envelopes purchased special for the summer. How ironic. I sent off missives to her and my Nana pleading that someone needed to get their shit together and send me some money. Nana’s came first and yet I struggled because two crispy dollar bills wasn’t enough.
The thing about a closed society of prepubescent girls (especially the entitled variety): They look for a feeding frenzy. Velociraptors in training bras.
The tears didn’t start with my “please, sir, I want some more” bus episode. The first event was that upon arrival I was shunned. I waltzed into a cabin of girls whose assignment was to hate me. I came in for the second half of camp; some of the girl’s parents offloaded their snarling tooth darlings for the entirety of the summer.
When I got there a beast of a child had prepped an entire cabin after she recognized my name on a new camper list. Her little mouth parts twitching and salivating at the idea of a potential victim. The head bully always needs helpers and the entire cabin of girls joined her. We were neither friends nor enemies in our elementary school, as far as I remembered; a bully doesn’t need a reason.
The camp was divided into a girls and a boys camp, one on each side of a lake. An evening dance was going to be held and that meant mixing. We came together and the girls tittered in hush tones, the boys would stare at their feet and hope they didn’t have to dance. The ’70s had some very good pop music. Danceable and melodic.
While I am not positive what the first song was that sparked my dancing dervish episode, I think it was either “Rockin’ Robin” not the original 1958 Bobby Day version but the cover by Michael Jackson…I am also fairly sure they played “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog.” Oh yes, even back then I loved an accented drum break.
That school year I had my first taste of dance lessons but at camp it was just me doing a single gal jam session. Event number two: That night in the hills of North Carolina I simply lost myself in the music. To this day I will be in a grocery store fondling an avocado and one of the songs that triggers the dance brain comes on and suddenly body parts start moving.
From birth, music and movement have lived inside me in a way that makes no sense to me. At Camp Pinewood in the hills of North Carolina my little girl brain reasoned if you thought they made fun of you before just wait till this hits the airwaves. I loved to dance and really how much worse could this summer get? At some point I realized they were not just watching—they were my audience. An audience means at some point you might be entertained…even if you came to judge.
Okay, I lied earlier. That one year of dance class had informed something in me. During my first dance recital I had my first experience of “performance blindness.” Completely lost in the performance, not remembering much about what I did, but realizing I had something special by the energy of the audience. It had nothing to do with technique. But that is a story for another time.
What these camp experiences did was create a version of myself that has since resurfaced on occasion. The “nothing to lose Randi.” It wasn’t that I was mature enough to not care what others thought of me, I don’t believe that is possible for a performing artist. I simply did what I loved when the opportunity arose, and the fact is I can’t or don’t want to control the music that lives in me. Shaking my money maker has paid bills, so except for some odd looks in the produce section it’s all good.
My groovy moves inspired a young man to join me on the dance floor. Taller and older than the other boys. He may even have been a junior counselor. While this isn’t clear in my memory just who he was, the reaction of others would later make it clear he was noteworthy.
Boys were not really on my radar yet. But if I did have a crush it was usually because I got to know the boy, which is how I am to this day. Little did I know that a guy who inserted himself into my musical number was going to make the remainder of my time in Jurassic Park much more interesting.
The next morning there was a shift in my cabin. I was being teased and now it was all about my “boyfriend” at camp. Here is where my memory really could use a jolt. The reason it’s not a clear memory is that it wasn’t clear in real time. The girls were using a name I didn’t know. This boy that danced with me was someone who was apparently very well known in camp. Did he and I talk after the dance? I think we did. It took me a long while to realize that all of the cabin buzz was because a boy danced with me.
The teasing was infuriating because the truth is I was so naïve I didn’t quite understand what they were accusing me of. We were now going steady because we danced? The teasing was different than the mean girl shunning; it had a tiny bit of respect sprinkled in. If I had the cojónes to get up and dance like no one was watching when an entire camp was actually watching … “What else is this girl capable of?”
The Velociraptor in Chief was slightly subdued in her taunts and dare I say a tiny bit jealous.
Right around this time one of the counselors stepped in and had enough of the mean girls’ shenanigans and coerced one of them to confess to their master plan of freezing me out. They were made to apologize, and the summer got slightly better.
I still couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. There were photos snapped when my mom came to pick me up. Me with some of the counselors I liked. Knowing my mom, she said: “everyone in the picture” and got all the bunkmates in the frame.
My new “friend” was excited to show her sharpened teeth.
The camp is still around and has a wonderful website. They opened their doors in 1967. It was almost like the time machine I asked for. They mentioned how phone calls home are limited. How I wish I could unplug for an entire summer. I might even deal with a cabin of mean dinosaurs just to have that kind of vacation. They also mentioned the evening dances.
Oh, the dances.
