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Wed, February 28

Too Big For My Britches

First of all, you have to see this great invite that Dan Cohen made for me. He totally captured the cube dwelling feeling:

The show was packed to the gills. People got turned away. I had audience members sitting on the stage just to squeeze in a few more. I don't know what to do! The crowd is too much! The reason I don't want to change venues is because Mo's is one of the few clubs that allows shows without charging an entry ticket. Most comedy clubs charge entry and require that you purchase two drinks. Here, the one drink rule is not even enforced. Where to next? Carnegie Hall?

We had nine performers including Jessica Delfino, and two new readers. I was in stitches the whole night. Marc read a piece titled, "Money Tony Owes Me', about crashing on various stranger's couches because he couldn't pay rent. Laura wrote about a horrible boss with a penchant for talking in baby voices. Raquel performed a piece titled, "I Am My Own Worse Boss", and described how she got rejected from the New Yorker at age twelve when she submitted a poem called, "Haircut". Bridge read, "Whoop Dee Doo", about her first job in the big city, and how she didn't know "what a Zagat is". Em read about a boss she lovingly called "Firecrotch", who mixed Irish drogue with Yiddishisms (often used incorrectly). Julie ranted about a boss that liked to point out when she looked hungover, or when she needed a bit more makeup. David made a little tribute to his rabbi dad, who was in the audience, before reading his piece about various horrible jobs he's taken on (including working in a sex toy shop and also a Holocaust museum). Jessica sang all new songs and told a great little story (not about a bad boss) about a yacht that lived in her grandparent's backyard for years (you had to be there). And I read about the worst camper I ever had working in daycamp. Here it is for your enjoyment:

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Worst Boss Ever: Molly

Her name was Molly. When I arrived late to work, she’d zero in on me with her beady brown eyes, and rush to my side in a nanosecond.

“Why are you late?” she’d ask, loudly just so others could hear.

“Molly,” I’d whisper, “I had some trouble with the bus.”

“What KIND of trouble,” she’d shout, only for the satisfaction of making me squirm.

“There was major highway traffic,” I would tremble, fear in my bones.

Molly stood at no higher than my thigh. Molly was five years old.

That was the summer I worked as an assistant camp counselor at my old day camp. When I was a camper there, we youngins were more than happy to fill our days with dodge ball, swim, arts and crafts, and of course the near obsolete camp activity, “computers.” Now it was all about state of the art rock climbing and lazar tag.

Molly was the worst camper in my group. She was worse than Olivia, who would ask me every five minutes, “Everyone’s the same, right? Nobody really won because we’re all winners, right?” She was worse than Sarah, who bullied my other campers into giving her their Lunchables. Molly was even worse than Rachel, who liked to talk about her “Woo Woo” all day long.

In my case, the Devil Wore Pigtails. And lucky me, the devil’s mom was a counselor there too. While the other kids were happy eating generic ices at snack time, I had to give Molly a special frozen fruit bar that her mom delivered clandestinely to me before snack period. While other kids dealt with the disappointment of let’s say, lake activities being closed due to torrential rain, Molly would stomp around and throw a fit that would make Britney Spears look tame. Any time a male counselor would come up to our group even if only to return an errant soccer ball, Molly would announce, “Look! There’s your BOYFRIEND!” just to ensure that he’d never approach me again.

One of Molly’s favorite games was “let’s make another girl cry.” I would be watching our girls playing nicely in the playground, when suddenly I’d feel a slight charge in the air. First I’d see two or three girls whispering to each other by the slides. Then another handful of my girls would leave the swings to join the others. Then, as if it were a highly organized crime ring at operation before my eyes, all of my girls except for one would be huddled in a corner of the playground, glaring at the one camper looking perplexed and abandoned on her tire swing.

“Girls? Can you tell me what exactly is going on?”

Molly would march towards me, like a channel 7 reporter with the latest breaking story and explain matter-of-factly:

“Leah pooped her pants.”

“Molly, that is not true. Leah is perfectly fine.” I’d tell her, rolling my eyes.

“Nuh-uhhhh! She did! I swear!” Molly would insist.

And at this point, Molly’s thumb would go in her mouth, and her eyes would start to tear.

“Alexis, she did. At least, I THOUGHT she did.” Through her fake tears, she never managed to hide the creeping smile on her face.

It would take me hours to calm the whole group down after that. Leah the “Pooped-Her-Pants Girl,” or whichever girl Molly picked as her victim of the day, would need to go to the nurse to calm down from hyperventilating. On those kinds of days I’d want to throw Molly off the nearest paddleboat. The worst part of it was that she KNEW this. And she loved it. I was at her mercy. And, not to mention, her mother’s legendarily generous end of the summer tip.

At mandatory swim, I knew better than to ask Molly to go into the water with the other girls. Like the Golden Child she’d sit on my lap and stare out at the common folk forced to learn the dog paddle and the crawl. And once in a while, like an adolescent boy at the movies, she’d sneak grabs at my boobs.

“Molly!” I’d say, clawing her paws off of my shirt.

“What?” she’d ask innocently.

“Nevermind. But you know what you did.”

“Nuh-uh,” she’d insist, hands back in her mouth.

When she tired of playing boob tag, she focused on trying to get herself soaked without having to go into the pool. Molly was that annoying kid who sat at the side of the pool and kicked the water up so it splashed everyone around her.

“Alexis, I need heeeelp! I can’t get my bathing suit offffff!” she’d whine when swim was over.

“Molly, let me help the other girls first. I know you know how to get yourself dressed.”

“Want me to ask my mom to help me then?” she’d taunt.

She knew how to play hardball.

“Ugh. Fine. Come here.”

At this point, Molly would lie down and become a dead weight on the floor:

“Come on Moll, I need you to lift your butt off the floor.”

“YOU lift my butt,” she’d say.

Earlier that summer a counselor had gotten fired for patting her camper’s behind. Molly knew this.

“Alexis, LIFT my BUTT!!!”

A part of me almost gave in, for the sweet relief that getting fired might bring. But before I could, Molly heard the whistle that signaled free period, and in a flash, had herself dressed and ready to go.

During free period, the campers were allowed to mill about the basketball courts and do whatever they wanted.

I think this was the worst idea the camp ever had.

See, my girls didn’t care much for making their own good times and probably couldn’t process the concept of using their imaginations. Free period, meant a whole forty five minutes to harass me. Molly, always the ringleader, would suggest that they take turns “doing my hair.” As you can see, I don’t have the kind of silky soft hair you can run your fingers through. Before I could protest, the girls would descend upon me like zombies in night of the living dead. There was nothing better than counselor hair. Nothing in the world more fun to play with.

“Ow! That hurts!” I’d cry, as the girls whirled around me, tugging at this strand and that. All the while I’d see Molly’s face smiling cruelly down upon me. From afar, it looked like some kind of horrible gang bang featuring five year olds in tie dye shirts and Keds. I’d close my eyes and try to go to my happy place. I’d imagine Mrs. Hannigan in “Annie” singing:

Some day
I'll step on their freckles
Some night
I'll straighten their curls

When it was all over, I’d emerge, my hair a giant nest of twigs, grass, Popsicle sticks, and camper drool. My pride, lost sometime right before I’d boarded that little yellow mini bus on that first day of camp lifetimes ago.

By the last week of camp, I was counting the hours to my freedom. I’d lost track of the dirty socks, the wet bathing suits, and the occasional phantom pant poopers. At this point in the summer, Olivia had realized that no, we weren’t all the same, and yes, she was a loser. Sarah was bloated from all the Lunchables she’d stolen. Rachel’s “Woo Woo” got old, and “pee pees” became all the rage. My boobs were sore. I vowed that the following summer I would travel. Being a counselor wasn’t worth the measly $1,000 I’d make over eight weeks of working 9 hour days.

But on the last day of camp, maybe just so I’d remember her fondly, Molly was all peaches and cream. She listened to our instructions. She ate the same snacks as the other girls. She got herself dressed. I wondered if she was a changed woman.

During the closing ceremonies Molly came up to me, hugged my knees, and looked up pleadingly into my eyes:

“Will you be our counselor next year Alexis please????” she asked.

And perhaps just because as much as she frustrated me, and as much as I hated her sometimes, I had in some weird way also grown to care about her. Like Stockholm syndrome, I’d come to like my torturer. A part of me wanted to think that I’d tamed the beast. That maybe I’d gotten through to her.

“Maybe, Molly,” I told her.

“Only maybe?” she smiled, her devil gaze locked on mine.

“Probably,” I conceded. And then, to my surprise, she kissed my hand like a gentleman, waved and ran off to wreak havoc elsewhere.

Posted by lexzog at February 28, 2007 10:49 PM

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