I just said adios to Loreal, who leaves for LAX in two hours. Before she left, Andrew, three of our old high school classmates (and members of Loreal's "soul sistahs" posse), and I sat on the couch in her grandmother's living room, watching The Simpsons in Spanish and discussing the most interesting places and circumstances under which we've peed. Standouts included doing so behind the ski slope directly into one's ski suit and long johns ("it's like baked pee!"); letting it trickle onto the blacktop while dangling from the monkey bars in preschool; and, for me, peeing on a folded up blanket on the way to Disneyland when I was eight. I also listened to the girls gossip about people we went to high school with. Listening to them was almost surreal; strangely, it was like sustenance to me. Whenever they mentioned a name in passing, I'd seize upon it, asking, "Did you just say X? How is he/she doing now?" I felt like I'd emerged from a cave. In a way, I had. It's strange that keeping in touch with most people from high school has never occurred to me. I love hearing about them, but I'm not sure I'd actually like to *talk* with them. Neurotic irrationality, I know.

I asked Andrew if he was excited about starting college. He replied, "I've been waiting for this since my freshman year of high school. I've known since then that high school wasn't for me." I'd like to say that high school wasn't for me, either, and perhaps it wasn't. But I don't know what is. I don't know if anything is right now, or if anything can be. Right now I'm just living my life in default mode, observing how quickly time passes when you live totally passively. Life just turns off like a light. So easily. I know rationally that this is a sad thing, but I'm not at a place yet where attempting to turn it back on would even be worth the trouble to me. This is a hard thing to explain, or to even fully comprehend on my part: we grow up disciples of "carpe diem," ache for it, making it impossible to understand for some, seizing the day may bring no more joy than squeezing ones eyes shut and sticking fingers in one's ears and counting to to the hundred-thousands just to pass the time. And at this point, that's all I can do--wait it out, doze as the sky begins to lighten, and try to awaken in time for the sunrise.

Things I Learned From Being a Day Camp Counselor

• If you are having a conversation with a counselor of the opposite sex, there will always be a camper who runs up behind you and shoves you towards him, shrieking, "KISS! KISS!"
  
• Campers will make a "smoothie" containing fritos, water, gatorade, peanuts, grapes and strawberries and carry it around proudly without flinching, but as soon as they catch a glimpse of your salmon/brown-rice/spinach salad, it's, "Ewwwwww!!"
  
• I cannot hold a lanyard without starting to work on it, even when it's an eight-string horizontal-twisty lanyard that I've found on the floor of a warehouse. Or perhaps I should say, "especially."
  
• Nothing makes you feel better than when a camper randomly comes up to you and hands you something craft-y, declaring, "I made this for you!"
  
• Nothing makes you feel worse than forgetting about the lanyard that 12-year-old Sam shoved in your hand yesterday as a shy little gift, and then having four campers run up to you the next day and exclaim, "We found the lanyard that Sam gave you yesterday at the bottom of the fire pit!"
  

Sigh. Camp was okay. I worked at Wilderness Camp, Sailing & Kayaking Camp, and Soccer Camp. I didn't play kickball, but I did play softball, badly (You know you're not an athlete when: As you come up to bat, the 10-year-old pitcher yells to all the 7-11 year olds in the outfield to "Come on in! Come in closer!!"). I went sailing for the first time in years--memorable if only because I was stuck with two preteen boys who thought it'd be hilarious to "make the counselor throw up"--and I kayaked for the first time ever. I went with a group of kids through the channel out to the ocean, but we had to turn around because the girl in my boat started crying when we begin to get hit with waves. It was a foggy day and the instructor, who's a couple years older than me, kept zooming in front of us on his motorboat so that we'd be left with several huge ripples in his wake. We were out pretty far--past the jetty with the huge boulders covered in seagulls and pelicans--and I kept hearing a foghorn and thinking a huge boat was going to all of a sudden pop out of the mist and run us over, but then I realized it was coming from the lighthouse on the dock and I felt sorta dumb. So we paddled over to the beach instead, and let the tide push us onto the sand, and then I left my sandals by the boat and rolled up my jeans and went out into the water while the kids went swimming. Oh, California.

But my favorite part was going on the motorboat with another one of the instructors while the kids were doing figure-eights in the harbor with their dinghies. The motorboat just kind of rocks and makes a purring sound and when you're not steering, you just sit there and drift your hand through the water and watch people on the beach and the mansions whose backyards are the ocean and the Ventura hills and the pacific that goes on forever, and you watch the sparkles in the water that blink for an instant until they're covered by another tiny, glittering wave, and you wonder how you could have ever been forlorn that California doesn't have fireflies.