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Michael Kadish
1/17/96
.5
"Hey, counselor," he yelled. "Check this out!" When Billy ran to his counselor, a large blue eyed football player type, the camper's arms were outstretched but securely holding onto a can of peanut brittle. "It's really good. C'mon, you want some?"
"You don't really expect me to open that, do you?" the counselor asked his camper. The counselor stood among some of his female coworkers, his mind obviously on something else besides Billy and his proffered gift. "I was in fourth grade once too," remarked the counsellor casually. He returned to a sophisticated conversation with the girls.
Billy snorted, walked away, and offered his can to a younger girl camper a few feet away. She eagerly accepted the can and opened it.
"Waaaahhhhhhhhh," the little girl combined a scream, whine and cry all at the same time.
"Hold on," said one of the better looking red-headed counselors. "What's the matter - uhmmm, Suzi?" she asked, looking at this probable second grader's name tag.
"He, sniff, sniff, he hit me in the face with something," Suzi said, pointing to the giggling Billy.
"Oh, come on, Billy. Didn't we have enough of that snake last year?"
"But, Becky! I didn't give it to her. She took it, honest! She just grabbed it and ran off." Rebecca picked up Suzi and walked back to her group. Rebecca began rubbing Suzi's back to calm her. Quickly, Suzi began squirming to get down. When she was safely out of ears' reach, conversation resumed.
"Didn't we tell him not to come back?"
"No, we just joked about it."
"He is such a brat!"
Had Billy gone to a sleep over camp, his peers and counselors probably would have jumped him. Or at the very least, they would have short sheeted his bed.
Instead he went to the same camp he had gone to for the past three years--the day camp at the MOSH. The camp lasted a full month, and campers got their (or their parents') money's worth of great experiences and chatchkies that could be envied by most.
Billy enjoyed the camp. He just didn't like the people. It was nothing personal, but he always had a social problem. It was hard for Billy to make friends on his own. Consequently, he did what it took to be recognized. Practical jokes made laughs; laughs made friends. He didn't know anything else he could do. Had he been funny on his own, or even a class clown, maybe he wouldn't have had to rely on practical jokes. Since he didn't possess those qualities, though, all people ever said about him was that he really just was a brat. Billy spent most of his allowance at the Magic and Gags Store near his house. They liked to see him come in, and had the authors of the various joke books he purchased knew how many nights Billy spent learning the jokes, they would have liked him too. He took his brothers' Boys' Life, memorized the jokes in the back, and ordered the trash out of the classified ads.
Okay, so Billy was a brat, but certainly not a jerk. He thought about the situation he was in. To him, at least, his logic made perfect sense. He couldn't tell Rebecca the truth about the snake can. She'd get angry and punish him. Billy knew his good qualities. Certainly, Rebecca could never figure out the truth. After all, he was a good liar, right? He'd never gotten in trouble before. It was just his way of making friends.
Besides, he continued thinking. Becky was trained to deal with kids. She could tell when they were lying and knew what the correct reaction would be. Better learn some of these dirty jokes. God, why did Suzi lie like that. She took the can. How is she going to sleep knowing she is blaming an innocent man?
And camp continued. Billy told his jokes, and the kids groaned. No, they didn't. They laughed. This was a fourth and fifth grade group. Mable Rable and Big Chief Nofart were hysterical to these kids. Heck, they were mostly fourth graders. They laughed their butts off. Nobody took Billy seriously, though. He never rested on his continuous quest to amuse all, in the process insulting everybody. Everybody knew everybody could take him in doses, but he was still a brat.
"Ok, listen up, I've got a surprise for all of you." It was the second week. Billy still did not get along well with the other kids and did not show up every day. People noticed he wasn't there, but they really didn't care. He was there today. Nobody, well, only a few people, laughed at his simply hilarious gag of putting the bug ice cube in Mark's drink. "Here to give one of his trademarked speeches on the human body is Mr. ...."
"Oh no. Not a lecture," came a groan from the back of the room. No surprise to anyone, it was Billy. This time, though, many of the campers silently agreed with him. He had a point. Feeding the snakes was fun. Fixing the electronic dinosaurs was cool. But listening to a speech? That was like a regular science class.
"Trust me. This guy is cool," said Matt, the blonde laid back counselor who was sitting on the side. "I guarantee you'll like this." Several of the older kids nodded their heads. They'd seen this guy before. He came out and began his presentation. He was about forty, turning grey, and skinny. He really was cool. For instance, it was normal at the museum for a speaker to be holding a human brain in a jar in one hand. That was nothing new. However, this guy also knew his audience.
He left the brain and went on to the heart. He hooked a kid up to a heart monitor and explained what was happening as he was chasing the kid around. While explaining vision he took out a stuffed cloth carrot. One kid felt obligated to ask whether it was real.
"Is it real?" asked the presenter, sounding dangerously like Joe Pesci. "Is it real, huh? Yes, it's real, can't you see it? It's real. This happens every time. Somebody always asks this. If it wasn't real, I couldn't do this," he said, bonking the kid lightly on the head. "It's real. It just isn't a real carrot."
So it continued. The time was drawing to a close. "And now, for something completely different," he casually announced in a British accent. After the chuckling stopped, he told the kids of his grand finale. He snapped his fingers, and Mark, Jason, and Matt, the three biggest counselors, rolled in a large object completely covered with a cloth.
"Now, let's see. Who should I ask to volunteer?," the teacher asked, looking around the room. "Oh, you're the kid who heckled me in the beginning. Did you like the show? Good. I don't get heckled very much, but it's your first time seeing me right? Still, it wasn't a very smart thing to do, was it?"
"No."
"Well, we'll have to make you smarter. You're in a science museum. Who do you think was the smartest scientist?"
"Einstein?"
"Very good. We're going to make you more like Einstein." This said, he whipped the sheet off the mysterious object in his grand finale. A large silver sphere was revealed. "Now take this stool behind the ball, and stand there. When I give the word, put your hands on the ball."
"I know I've seen this before. What does it do?" Billy muttered to himself.
"Word!" the man shouted. Billy put his hands on the ball and felt a giant shock of electricity. He felt like he was being bitten by a large animal, but without the pain. To fit the punchline, Billy's hair was sticking straight up.
As soon as the electricity was turned off, Billy had to decide what to. Initially, his response was to go and strangle the speaker. This would be a great idea, except that this grand finale was a great practical joke. Attacking the joker would make him a huge hypocrite. So Billy did what he had long ago decided would be his reaction if he ever met someone like this teacher. He fainted.
Bill was very convincing. The speaker was supposed to become a senior leader in the camp. He stayed on as planned, except he was very cautious around Billy for a few days.
Now, I'm not going to tell you Billy and the teacher became best friends. That's a little too sappy for reality. The speaker was Billy's favorite counselor, but that wasn't saying much. Billy, though, appeared to have turned into a better kid. Rumor had it that the electricity jolted some sense into his head. Actually, Billy became a boy with a mission. He resolved that before the end of camp, he would pull a good joke on the speaker.
The problem was, Billy had no idea how the speaker would react. Normally, when you approach older people with a gag, one of two things would happen. Either they would turn up their noses, and tell you they knew the trick, or they'd fall for it, and quickly appear irritated. No gag works like it should with older people.
In real life, Billy had noticed, if somebody had the black ink around their eye, another person would help him instead of laughing at him. God forbid that an older person ever admit that he understood a child's joke. If a joke is on TV, or if it's pulled by another adult, then an adult could laugh. But if it's pulled off by a kid, huramppph. Then again, this speaker had kooth; he had guts. Maybe he knew how to take a child's joke. Maybe, just maybe...
Fast forward to the last day of camp.
"Hey, Speaker, want some peanut brittle?" Groans abounded from campers and counsellors alike.
"Sure," said the speaker. He took the can, held it at 180 degrees and shot it directly at Billy.