As the summer went on, the babysitters spent most of the days together watching our kids play as we got to know each other. We talked about everything from high school to our families to the results of the Cosmo magazine quizzes that the girls always wanted the guys to take. There is something incredible about a bunch of teenagers who have never had sex taking quizzes to determine whether or not they were selfish lovers.
At night, we told jokes that were inappropriate to tell around the kids we took care of. A lifetime of listening to stand-up and years of being quiet in my high school hallways meant I knew thousands of these jokes. I regaled my new friends with bar jokes, light-bulb jokes, and (for those with a darker sense of humor) dead-baby jokes. The only thing worse than virgins taking quizzes to see what kind of lovers they are is a group of babysitters falling out of their chairs laughing over dead-baby jokes.
I was enjoying holding court with my new friends, but as the summer moved forward, they began coupling off. Some would declare themselves boyfriend and girlfriend one night and be broken up the next, while others were together the entire summer. The proximity that camp provided made it hard not to be attracted to each other. I am guessing that’s how Alexa Howard found her camp boyfriend.
I’d had a crush on the girl who complimented my Smurf sheets since the first night. Perhaps it was because she had inadvertently bailed me out of what could have been a tough situation. Or maybe it was because she was cute and often flirted with me. Either way, her name was Charlotte, and I thought she was the best.
One night, I asked Charlotte to take a walk with me. Everyone in camp knew what that meant, but I still had to go through the formalities. I may as well have said, “would you like to be alone with me so I could tell you that I like you and maybe we could make out a bit?”
Charlotte said no.
What? Who says no to an innocent walk? How did she know I was going to tell her I liked her and hope she’d make out with me? You know, aside from everyone knowing that’s exactly what “would you like to take a walk” meant.
Charlotte’s no surprised me, because I’d gotten a great vibe from her ever since that first day in the bunk. She always listened to my stories, and she laughed at my jokes. So why didn’t she like me?
Since there were only two dozen of us and we spent fifteen hours a day with one another, I was able to find out through gossip pretty quickly. Charlotte didn’t like me because I liked myself too much.
Charlotte complained that I was always monopolizing conversations and that I was always telling stories about myself, which are also two descriptions of stand-up comedy. At first, I brushed off Charlotte’s rejection as ridiculous. How could anyone monopolize conversation? If you want to say something, say it. And who else am I supposed to tell stories about, if not myself? Am I supposed to regale people with stories from someone else’s perspective?
Charlotte, unfortunately, was right. I was so happy with my new ability to be interesting that I forgot how to be interested. While monopolizing conversations and telling stories about yourself can make you a great stand-up comic, it also makes you pretty annoying to talk to.
I was confused. Here I was, finally comfortable enough to talk to someone who wasn’t my girlfriend, and she was rejecting me because I was talking too much. I was running my mouth because I had years of silence to make up for. I’d tell Charlotte all about it, but I’d have to tell the story from someone else’s perspective for her to enjoy it. Man, she is going to hate this book.
Charlotte complaining I had an ego was a setback, sure, but a necessary one. After years of being shy and quiet, the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction. I had gotten drunk with attention and, frankly, didn’t know how to handle it. Charlotte’s rejection, in the long run, would be a positive thing. But at the time, I had to learn how to cope.
THE PRANK WAR
The prank war started naturally. I had three close friends at camp—Ari Landau, Eyal Dar, and Nate Boxer. Ari was younger than the rest of us and sensitive about it. We didn’t care, but there was obviously a part of him that felt less than because he didn’t have the life experience we had. Though most of our extra life experiences involved getting turned down by girls.
Every day, the four of us met at a picnic table after breakfast to hang and talk while making sure the kids didn’t do anything dangerous. Or dangerous enough to get us fired.
One day, Ari arrived clearly upset. Charlotte had said something that really bothered him, but he wouldn’t tell us what. Nate asked if she’d turned him down for a walk, and we all laughed. It’s amazing how much intent factors into how hurtful people can be. I had no problem with Nate teasing me about my rejection, because I knew he meant well. But if our bunk cool guy had made fun of me, I would have been livid.
And that’s what happened to Ari. He told us that Charlotte had called him a little boy. And not in an aren’t-you-cute way. She knew he was sensitive about his age and she said it anyway, intending to hurt him. He’d stormed out of the room silently.
Eyal suggested that we do something to get back at her. As the ball-buster of the group, Nate had no problem with that. And it was hard for me to turn down something that could get a laugh. It would be a great way to show Ari that he was a respected part of the group. And it would be more fun than just sitting at a picnic table.
The mistake people often make when planning a revenge prank is going overboard. I believe the hallmark of a good revenge prank is letting the punishment fit the crime. Charlotte had purposely said something hurtful, so the best way to get her back was to make her feel guilty about what she’d done.
The four of us came up with a plan. We concocted a story that Ari was actually three years older than the rest of us but suffered from a rare disease that made him look younger. I pulled Charlotte aside that night to explain to her how what she said had really hurt Ari.
I enjoyed the charade, probably more than I should have. I liked defending my friend. I also liked practicing improv.
Charlotte fell for our ploy and asked me all the questions we had predicted and prepared for. What’s the disease called (poliponesia), how long has he had it (his whole life), who else knows (just Nate and Eyal), and so on. We saw those questions coming. And then, there was one question we hadn’t thought of.
“If he’s older, wouldn’t he be in college now?”
“It comes with a learning disability,” I explained, leaning on my improv experience. “That’s why he was so upset when you called him a little boy. That’s why he stormed out.”
Charlotte followed the pattern we assumed she would. Even though I swore her to secrecy, she approached Nate and Eyal to ask them if it was true. As planned, they pretended to be upset with me for telling her and said I needed to stop talking so much. That was something we knew Charlotte would agree with.
Later that night, Charlotte approached Ari and told him how sorry she was, how she never should have said what she’d said, and how she hoped he could forgive her. Ari said he hoped that she could forgive him for making it all up but was glad to know she was sorry. This time, Charlotte was the one who stormed away silently.
Anyone who has ever been involved in a prank war knows that was not where things ended. Charlotte spent the next two weeks stewing over how she was going to get back at me and Ari. She didn’t seem to think Eyal and Nate were in on the prank; Charlotte assumed that we had tricked them, too. Maybe she didn’t want to admit that she was the only one gullible enough to believe such a ridiculous story. But when she finally had her plan, she asked Eyal and Nate for help. That is like asking the Secret Service to help you kill the president.
Charlotte’s plan was completely uncreative—to sneak into our bunk while we were sleeping and pour water in our beds to make it look like we’d wet them. To get away with it, Charlotte asked Nate and Eyal to tell her when we normally went to sleep. This was ridiculous for a few reasons. Aside from telling our close friends what she planned on doing to us, hers was an impossibl
e question to answer. We didn’t have a set bedtime. And if she did want to know whether we were asleep, she could have just snuck over at four A.M. and knocked on the door gently (to be safe) and seen whether anyone was up.
Nate told her we went to bed around eleven on Thursdays because we worked early Friday mornings, a preposterous answer since we were rarely back at the bunk before one A.M. The answer was even more preposterous because she was usually out that late, too. Sometimes people believe what it is convenient for them to believe.
It was extremely difficult to feign sleep that night. We were giddy, knowing what was coming. We held to my the response to an action must match the original action prank philosophy and rigged a water bucket and trip wire on the inside of the door. And to make it more fun, we all went to “sleep” with water balloons under our blankets. If she wanted to wet our beds, we’d wet her.
When Charlotte came in, she brought a few of the other girls with her. Thankfully Charlotte entered first and caught the brunt of the bucket. We sprung out of bed fully dressed and started throwing the balloons, and the girls stormed out of the bunk—not silently at all.
Ari, Nate, Eyal, and I tossed some towels down on the floor and headed to the staff rec room to play some ping-pong. It was only eleven-thirty—way before our bedtime.
That is how most of the summer went. The girls were constantly trying to get revenge for something that Charlotte had started in the first place, and we were constantly foiling their plans. At Hunter I had Jacob and in USY I had Mason, but in a few short weeks at camp I now had a group of friends that had my back completely and were there for me in times of war. Even if it was only a prank war.
Pretty quickly, the girls weren’t upset anymore. Instead, they were having fun trying to pull one over on us. Once, they put a few dozen Dixie cups in our beds while we were out. So we covered every inch of their floor with them. Once, they put an open, upside-down bottle of water on our bunk porch so that if we picked it up, it would spill everywhere. So we did the same thing to every porch in camp except theirs (including our own), thinking everyone would blame them.
I loved every minute of the prank war. I even loved the minor pranks the girls got away with, as those pranks gave me reason to come up with the next bit of justice. I loved the creativity involved. And years of being bullied made me very interested in people getting what they deserved, even if it was all in good fun.
One night, the prank war finally ended. There was a staff building with a porch that the girls would often sit out on, and you could get to the porch roof from the second floor windows. I loved sitting out on that roof at night. From up there, you could see above some of the trees and watch the moonlight hit the lake. We were just ten feet above everyone else, but it felt completely private. It probably would have been a great place to take a girl, if the one I’d liked earlier in the summer didn’t hate hearing me speak.
The guys hung out up there pretty regularly, and one of the girls always thought it was dangerous. She freaked out constantly about how we were going to slip and fall and end up in a mangled heap. We grew tired of her incessant lecturing and decided that for our next prank, we would end those lectures.
We took a dummy left over from a camp play and we dressed it like me. That wasn’t too hard—we just had to find the right ugly hand-me-downs. Then we gave it my jacket and my hat with an orange rag underneath it.
With the girls on the porch below, I loudly wondered how close to the edge I could get without falling. I then did an old magician’s trick—I programmed the girls to truly believe I was up there and close to the edge by poking my head over the side of the roof. The guys held my legs, just in case. I was mischievous—I wasn’t insane.
When I knew the girls saw me hanging over the roof, I disappeared back up as Nate loudly warned me to stay away from the edge. I laughed and said I was indestructible. And then we hurled that dummy over our heads like an out-of-bounds soccer ball. Maybe it was more like a mini-basketball, because that’s what doubled as the dummy’s head. Which was perfect, since the head bounced just a bit before settling in a mangled heap.
Nate ran downstairs and burst out the door and yelled, “Oh my God, is Steve okay?!” I followed close behind Nate and yelled, “Oh my God, am I okay?!” The horrified-yet-angry looks on the girls’ faces were well worth the many slaps on the shoulder we received soon afterward. I was surrounded by friends. Not just Ari, Nate, and Eyal, but the girls, too. That prank war made us all into allies.
Throwing fat, dead me off a roof was the last shot fired in the prank war. Maybe it was because that was the last week of camp, or maybe it was because it’s hard to top faking your own death. Either way, we won. Which was particularly gratifying since it all started when someone criticized one of us for being immature.
THE PLAY IS THE THING
Junior year was when I started feeling comfortable at Hunter. I had found a few friends, the softball team was on their way to another first-place finish, and my grades were floating well above C-level.
Mr. Mikkelsen had definitely affected my approach to school (and to life). Another reason I was able to pick my grades up is that I became increasingly able to pick my classes.
We went from selectives (where we had a choice between two or three types of the same class) to electives (where we could choose any class we wanted). The first class I chose was creative writing.
Creative writing was wonderful. It was taught by a funny (and often stoned) middle-aged woman named Mrs. Acker. Our assignments were to write poetry, plays, short stories, and other things I’d been writing during my lunch breaks anyway. Humor was rewarded in Mrs. Acker’s class and I coasted through with As on almost every assignment.
I have always loved storytelling. I grew up creating silly stories with my sister, and now I got to write and be rewarded for it. It almost seemed unfair in the best way possible.
Another reason I loved Mrs. Acker’s class is because, like a youth group, a creative writing class is self-selective. Bullies don’t know how to express themselves creatively—that is why they are bullies. My creative writing class was filled with people like me—it was the Freak Hallway, but in chairs.
One of those creative people was Katie Averill. Katie was a senior, but she took the time to say hello to me after class, by name. Katie didn’t just smile in my general direction, or even kind of look at me like other girls I’d made the mistake of thinking might like me. Katie actually said, “Hi, Steve!” and asked about my weekend and complimented my work.
Katie’s writing was fantastic. When she read to the class, her stories made me laugh, her poems made me sad, and her smile made me melt. I didn’t have the guts to ask a senior out. But man, I loved going to that class.
As much as I loved creative writing, the thing I still enjoyed most was improv.
We weren’t breaking any comedy ground: Most of our meetings consisted of re-hashed games from “Whose Line Is It Anyway.” Okay, all of our meetings consisted of rehashed games from “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” except the ones where we’d watch bootlegged copies of “Whose Line Is It Anyway.” But I loved every minute of it.
That the improv club met on Mondays was fortuitous—the meetings gave me a reason not to dread the end of the weekend, and some happiness to start off the week.
One Monday, we had something different to discuss: auditions for Brick Prison.
Brick Prison, named for Hunter’s castle-like exterior, was our student-theater company. Hunter was a very arts-friendly school, and not just because of the Freak Hallway. We had three big plays every year: a classic like Death of a Salesman or Arsenic and Old Lace, a musical like Jesus Christ Superstar or Grease, and the homegrown Brick Prison.
Brick, as it was affectionately known, was the most revered. Brick was made up of five student-written, one-act plays. Unlike the classics and the musicals, Brick was student-run from start to finish.
When I was in elementary school, I had the lead in all the school plays. I wasn’
t a good actor; I was just one of the few kids who could remember his lines.
Hunter was different. There was so much talent at Hunter. I had already tried out for Brick the year before, and I was cast as a nonspeaking extra, sitting at a bus stop. At least I had no need to go to rehearsal—I had plenty of experience waiting for a bus.
Junior year, I had a lot more confidence—both in myself and in my improv abilities—so I tried again. And this time I did it a little differently.
The audition consisted of reading a monologue. The majority of students who were auditioning read one of the provided selections. I asked if I could read something I’d prepared instead. When they said yes, I launched into the “Who do you love? You love a car!” monologue from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It worked—I was cast as the comic relief in one of the plays.
My role was small but fun. In a dream sequence of an otherwise serious play, I was one of two over-the-top TV announcers commentating on one of the characters climbing a building, risking their life to save another’s. My scene closed with me excitedly proclaiming, “They both could die—let’s watch!”
I loved getting laughs, and unlike in improv club, there would actually be an audience this time. Also, the star of one of the other acts was extremely talented, and it was wonderful to learn from him even though he was only a sophomore. And my hilariously over-the-top co-anchor was a girl named Amalia who was best friends with Katie Averill.
Amalia and I had a great time hamming it up in our roles as the most insensitive news anchors in history. And during the final show on Saturday, we decided to push it further.
The final performance was always prank night, and pranks were something I’d gotten pretty good at. The idea was that the crew would mess with the actors in ways that wouldn’t be obvious to the audience, and the actors would have to power through as if nothing was wrong. A coat rack might be on the wrong side of the stage. There might be pornography inserted into the book an actor was reading. Or, like when I was a sophomore, they might send in one of the nonspeaking extras dressed in a trench coat, pretending to flash the rest of the extras at the bus stop while the stars couldn’t see what was happening behind them. I enjoyed wearing that trench coat.
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