Kipworld

I learned two life lessons in one weekend in junior high. Usually when you hear that opening to a story, it’s some saccharine moral like, “Live every day like it’s your last.” Don’t worry. I learned that there’s no safety in numbers and that women are trouble.

Some background: I went to a small school called Brookfield Academy. I went there from the time I was in kindergarten until 8th grade. Class size was small, around 30 or 35, and most of us had known each other the entire time. My older siblings had both gone there, and when I was young, they’d disappear for the weekend to a place called Silver Birch Ranch. By the time I hit middle school, the location had changed to Phantom Ranch. The teachers took the entire middle school twice a year, once in the fall and once in the winter, for a four day weekend. kludgy

Phantom Ranch offered all sorts of rustic fun, from horseback riding to archery to riflery. There was hot chocolate readily available. Some activities were season dependent, like canoeing and broomball. The big highlight was Capture the Flag, played over the ranch’s 5 acres. The 8th grade would challenge the younger kids and always win by a large margin.

Of course, when you have a hundred preteens together for a couple overnights, there are bound to be some shenanigans. The teachers tried to cut down on budding hormones by forbidding boys to be in the girl’s cabin and vice versa.

Like I said, I’d basically grown up with the 30 or so kids in my class. So i thought i knew them pretty well. But do you really get to know people when you’re a boy and up until middle school you think half of the class has cooties? Of course, at this time of life things were changing. Clearly changing. We didn’t know quite what we were feeling, but we were curious about it.

Phantom Ranch. Winter. Seventh grade. My class grew up, all at once.

The fall trip had been the same as usual. We’d had hot chocolate, gotten our butts kicked by the 8th grade in capture the flag. Preparations were in earnest to make the winter trip the best one ever.

For one, we were going to get stuff from the Army surplus catalog so that we’d be invisible to those 8th graders. Face paint, camo cloaks. We pooled our money in anticipation. We talked about our old strategy, or lack therof. Our problem was that we always attacked constantly instead of relying on safety in numbers.

Also, we’d decided that we could at least talk to girls. Not all of them, of course, but there were a couple who, well, they were almost more fun to chat with than some of the guys in the class. Almost. Except chatting with them was strangely difficult, sometimes.

There was a buzz in the air in the weeks leading up to the winter Phantom Ranch trip. The type of stirrings you feel around times of great upheaval. Revolutions have been started with less electricity.

Here’s the thing. I wasn’t in on the buzz. It was centered around Jason, Ciaran and Ryan. Since I grew up with these guys, they knew that I was horrible at keeping secrets. The secret this time was about Gardetto.

Remember Gardetto’s? The snack mix, with the rye chips? Well, I heard Jason and Ciaran discussing Gardetto and then I asked them about it and they told me not to worry about it. It was on a need to know basis.

It wasn’t until a week to go when I managed to get Jason to owe me a huge favor and I cashed it in by getting the Gardetto secret out in the open. Turns out that Ciaran’s mother had had the great idea of a prank for us to play: letting a mouse loose in the girl’s cabin. She went so far as to purchase a plain brown mouse, who was transported in a white Gardetto’s box, hence the name.

Haha. I was in on the secret. Buzz was white hot now.

But wait? How did this prank on the girls fit in with the new feelings they were stirring in our guts, a buzz which was less defined?

We didn’t know, but the mouse had been purchased. Our course was clear.

So now that I was in on the secret, I was all for letting that mouse go as soon as possible. To tarry would hazard rupturing something trying to keep the surprise bottled up.

The actual operation took place a couple hours after arrival. We settled into our cabin atop the big hill and then walked across the path to the girl’s cabin. Certain key details had not yet been worked out. How would we make sure that Gardetto not just hide in the corner and escape out the door without causing any pandemonium? More concerning was the problem that plagues any operation: how would we enjoy the reaction caused? Our course was less clear.

We could wait no longer. Ryan Law placed intrepid Gardetto into the tiny zippered pocket above his heart (it was the early 90’s, our coats had pockets everywhere) and the mouse crew headed over to the girl’s cabin.

“Can we come in and see your place?” he asked at the door.

“It’s just like your cabin,” Dahlia Kissebah said. As girls went, Dahlia was cootieless, maybe even cool. Dare I say, there were some guys who Jason and I would gladly ditch to talk to Dahlia. This was high praise.

“Well,” Ryan said, brain visibly racing for ideas, they couldn’t refuse a man in peril, right? “I really need to go to the bathroom.”

“So go to your cabin,” Dahlia replied. “It’s right there.”

Ryan was stuck. Maybe just plain begging would work. “I really have to go.”

“Alright,” she said, letting him in. We had no excuse for following a few steps behind, but with one guy in the door breaking the rules, what could it hurt to let us in?

The cabins were laid out all the same, a bunch of bunk beds in a main room with some ancillary rooms poked here and there. Ryan walked into the middle, and released the mouse. Actually, the mouse deployment took a little more work since Gardetto had settled nicely into his little nook and he didn’t want to go. Ryan scrabbled around, Gardetto bit him and Ryan flung the little guy. Gardetto landed gracefully and took refuge under the heater. We ran out quickly.

Kristin Raspanti (definitely not a cootieless girl) came running out soon after. “It’s a sewer rat! It’s this big!”

Ah, this must’ve been what Mrs. Bradley wanted to see. Glorious.

At dinner, the entire student body was warned about the girl boy mandatory cabin separation. Some giggling. The rest of the night was spent normally, with a movie in the big ranch house. It was always some movie with an inspiring one word title like Glory or Victory. Normal, except that Dahlia and Liz Henry sat a little bit nearer to Jason, Ciaran and I, which was made easier because we were sitting a little farther from the rest of the guys.

Friday was completely normal. There was broomball, Classics, horseback riding. At night, we played Capture the Flag against the 8th grade and got our clocks cleaned by a large margin. This was even with the camoflauge stuff we’d gotten from the Army Surplus catalog. Turns out you need to buy different stuff for winter than you get in the fall. Imagine that.

The next day, Saturday, after mandatory fun activities, I asked Jason what we were going to do. “Well, we might go up to the basketball court to meet up with Dahlia, Liz and some other people,” he said.

Whoa. Meeting up.

After dinner, we went up the dark path, up the hill. No one was there. We started talking, as usual, about Army surplus. And then they came, dark figures in the moonlight.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“It’s cold.” Northern Wisconsin has this way of being cold in February.

“Yeah.”

“Wanna go play Truth or Dare?”

“Uhhhh, sure.”

We gathered in our cabin. Guys. Girls. Breakin’ the rules. A rhythm was established. Guy question. Girl question. Guy question. Girl question. No one dared to take any dares. We stationed lookouts on the path to warn us if any teachers were coming. I’m a little embarassed to say it now, but the lookouts were chosen completely by social pecking order. Hey, if I wasn’t Jason’s best friend, I’m not sure I would’ve made the cut to be in cabin at all.

The first and last Dare came from their side. “Do you wanna play Spin the Bottle?”

A bottle was picked. There were only 6 players. Dahlia. Jason. Liz Henry. Me. Angie Hochtritt. Carl Gustafson, angling to raise himself on the social ladder.

Carl’s spin. Angie. “Turn out the lights!” the girls screamed. Lights went out. A kiss in the dark.

Dahlia’s spin. Me. “Turn out the lights!” the girls screamed. Flash. Kiss. We barely brushed in the night.

Jason’s spin. “Lamers is coming!” Mr. Lamers was the science teacher. I guess having a cabin on the top of the hill flashing on and off is teacher code for “Something fishy”.

So much for lookouts. He came in with half of the girls still in the room (the rest were in closets or the bathroom).

He smirked the knowing smirk of a 20 year veteran teacher. “I see nothing,” he told us guys. “But don’t make me get my glasses.”

We nodded. The girls left. The buzz started up. We had a story! Not as good as the Silver Birch one my sister told where Ciaran’s oldest brother got caught in the girl’s cabin bathroom and broke the seat. But a story none the less.

But our story would be much more infamous.

Settling down that night. I got to sleep in Ryan’s Army surplus hammock, since I was the only one light enough to lie in it without tipping over the bunkbeds it was tied to. I was trying to get enough blankets wrapped around me so that I wouldn’t freeze when Ms Renkert walked in.

Ms Renkert was the 4 foot high gym teacher. She could be the scariest woman alive. When this lady told you to drop and give her 20, you gave 20.

She burst in that night, catching most of us in our PJ’s. “I want all you boys downstairs in the main lodge tomorrow at 6 o clock sharp. Not 6:05. You get me?”

We nodded.

She closed the door.

Gardetto! We couldn’t understand why it had taken so long for the hammer to fall. We didn’t want to say “Oh, Ciaran’s mom made us do it.” We prepared a defense. Surely we would just be lectured. I mean, they couldn’t punish all of us. Punishing an entire class for the work of a few?

The next morning, the principal, Mrs. Honeyager, told us we were going home that instant for having girls in our cabin and for inappropriate conduct. This was unheard of. An entire class, in trourble. Not an entire class. 7 people out of 26 were spared. 3 girls who’d stayed in their own cabin, the 2 that had told on the rest of us and the 2 lookout guys. These people were allowed to go skiing for the day with the rest of the students. While we went home early on the bus (no talking allowed) to be lectured back at school.

Ms Renkert took the floor. “I want you maggots packed and back here in 20 minutes. Not 25!” We hurried back up the path. The bus ride was silent, under the watchful eye of Mrs Honeyager.

Back at school, they told us that our parents were going to be called to get us. Meanwhile, Mrs. Honeyager would talk with us one at a time, and again with our parents there. This lady could’ve run a police precinct. Their tactical error was that they gave us 20 minutes alone in the history room. Jason and I stood up. We’d seen movies. We knew what to do.

“We have to have a unified story. They don’t know anything except for what we tell them.”

“What about the tattlers?” someone asked.

“Force of numbers,” we answered. “As long as no one cracks, we’re OK.” Quickly we laid out a story that involved only plain vanilla questions in the Truth or Dare game and turned Spin the Bottle into something with no kissing.

Then Honeyager came for us, one at a time.

During my one on one, I glanced at her pad. She had a list of our names with little marks next to them. An M meant that you had been part of the mouse plot. C meant being in the cabin but there was also S for swearing and inappropriate talk during the game. She wanted us to confess, just confess and it would be OK.

I gave her nothing. The fact that there were marks already next to my name meant that someone before had already cracked.

Mrs. Honeyager wouldn’t let us leave until she’d talked to our parents, which meant that I couldn’t go home with Jason. My mother had chosen this day to go out for lunch with my aunt. She thought she would have the day off.

In the end, only Carolyn Dicus and I were left. Her parents lived and worked on the other side of town so it took them a while to leave and get over. She was crying. “Today’s my birthday.” Finally they showed up. With a cake.

The other kids were getting back from Phantom Ranch. No one knew why the seventh grade had just disappeared. Rumors were flying. They pressed their faces up to the window of the room.

Being mysterious felt good, until I remembered that my mother still wasn’t there.

Finally she showed up. The conference with Honeyager wasn’t too bad, since I had confessed to nothing. I was let go.

My family thought that the whole affair was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. At dinner, my dad made me tell him about the mouse over and over.

At school for the next couple weeks, we acted like political prisoners. “They’re making an example out of us.” We spoke like veterans. “There’s no safety in numbers.” And we all agreed that women were trouble, from Mrs. Bradley who’d provided the mouse to Mrs. Honeyager who’d punished us.

That was of course when we weren’t sitting with Dahlia and Liz at lunch.