Essay

Long, mile and a half walks, baseball games and people acting like hillbillies, the perfect recipe for wanting to pound your head on a brick wall. For a long time now I had been dreading this opportunity.

At the beginning of Vampy we had been informed that on Friday, the second week we would be staying here, we would have to go on a mandatory mile and a half walk to watch a baseball game between the Hot Rods and the Charleston River Dogs.

As we started out in our not so tight groups the different counselors began to allow their campers to mingle. I fell in beside two people that were behaving more than a little strangely. One girl was talking animatedly in a “hillbilly” voice while the other listened attentively.

“Now ya see freend, us heelbeely nerds gots ta stick together.” Her companion was barely containing laughter.

She replied in the same voice, “Heelbeely nerds? Tain’t that one o them oxyprobleems?”

“Nah freend, I thank ya mean oxymo-ron.”

Now her friends gives a mock angry glare. “Yous calling me a mo-ron?”

Now they turned to me as I was staring at them interestedly. “Whach you lookin’ at?”

To this I replied, “Just wondering why you’re talking like that.”

They said in unison, while shaking their heads, “City folk.”

I hated being called a city girl. City girls are the ones that have manicured nails, have never ridden a horse in their life, and would rather have a tiny little Pekinese or Shi-Tzu instead of a great dane or lab. I was not city folk. “I’ll have you know that I live on a sixty two acre farm with pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and horses.”

They smiled then and one of them said, “Weel yous a heelbeely too!”

I declined their offer to talk like they were, I didn’t feel like acting like a “mo-ron” tonight. Then the rain started to fall. We had reached the stadium and people were getting under the awning as fast as they could. We waited there until the pounding rain had been reduced to a slight drizzle.

When we finally exited the awning we spread towels and blankets on bare grass right next to the field. The two hillbillies and I were then joined by an Indian girl. She seemed less interested in acting like a hillbilly and more interested in staring at the stars and pretending to talk to invisible people. I though t that it looked quite fun.

“Well, you know that I know your little secret Bambi,” she whispered to the sky. “Oh yes I do. Shall I tell her? Shall I tell her you killed her mother?”

This was a little more frightening than the hillbillies but it was also more amusing. “Juniper, Bambi, Lil, Nay, Gena and Pete and or Fred whichever is here at the moment, oh Pete? Okay, hi Pete. This is Madi. Say hi! Now!” She said by way of introduction.

We had many conversations, especially with Pete (he loved to argue) that is, until he left and Fred came. Fred was much quieter than Pete. Then we talked to Juniper. A few people stared at us and laughed or else looked worried for our mental health.

I eventually left the three as they were becoming increasingly strange. I walked up to Erin, a girl who was in my class. I didn’t know her very well so I decided to talk to her. An Asian girl was sitting with her.

“Hey, what’s up?” This was me.

“Sitting here…”

“I see.”

We introduced each other and talked for a while. We watched as the sun slowly sank beneath the Earth and the two baseball teams tried in vain to break their tie.

A few amall children played on the other side of the fence, where the seats were. One little boy came up to the rail and said, “Hi.”

Erin apparently being great with little kids was quick to respond, “Hi, how are you?”

“Good”

“My name is Erin, what’s yours?”

“----.”

“That’s a cool name.”

The little boy laughed. He had immediately taken to Erin. He talked to her for a little while and then left. He came back shortly after. “Charlottè!” Erin called to her roommate. “Check out my new buddy, his name is ----.”

Charlottè, the Asian girl, ---- and I all laughed. The other kids in my class had only recently begun to see Erin become this animated.

Erin’s friend was acting like a cat now. It seemed as though this scared ---- a little. Two more little kids came to the fence, I’m guessing they were ---‘s brother and sister, one was a year old, maybe less, and carrying an Elmo doll. The other was a little girl with blond hair. They also seemed to like Erin.

Finally it was time for fireworks. It was after ten and the baseball game had ended Hotrods 5 and Riverdogs 4. ----had decided to join us for the show.

SHOOM! BAM! TCHTHCHTCH! Blue, red, green, gold, burple, and many other colors zoomed out of the back of a pickup truck, creating beautiful clouds of sparks in the air. It was over far too soon. ‘

Erin and I said goodbye to each other, her friend meowed farewell at me also. Emily, I had to find Emily. My counselor was tall and easy to see in the mass of people scrambling to leave. I reached her and we waited for the last of our group, Megan. She finally arrived and we began to make our way back to Wester’s campus.

I walked beside Megan and I asked her, “So, what did you think of the base ball game?”

She replied, “Not bad, I’m more into dancing though.”

“Hmm, so what class…”

“Theater.”

“…Sorry, I keep forgetting.”

“It’s okay. You?”

“Writing.”

After that we spun off into debates about the war in Iraq, politics, and religions. She will make a very gifted public speaker. She got her points across very well without making me feel threatened, like she was trying to turn me to her side of things.

I never really pay much attention to the people in my dorm but I decided that maybe I could be good friends with them if I tried. Megan wasn’t all that bad and my roommate was nice so why couldn’t the rest be.

Making friends wasn’t actually all that hard for me, once I decided to try it. After all, the rest of the people here have tons of friends. Now that I think about it though that could be bad. Maybe they don’t want any more friends?

I have already made too many friends though, I will never talk to most of them again so why even make them in the first place?

And now back my own ragtag group of random people that sat at our table one day. Back to normal. Oh no.