As is quite common with me, a rather small item noticed in passing brought up some wonderful memories. The small item this time was an add in the newspaper for a “scholastic kids camp”--on of those wonderful attempts to get introverted bookworms out into the glory of nature and show them the world. I had to laugh.

Back in college, I worked at one of those camps for a summer. I had attended various summer camps as a kid. None of them the nature types, however; College for Kids, Summer Science Institute, Summer Art Camps, that sort of thing, But having spent a year working with learning-disabled kids (you may remember me writing about them here before) I decided that a summer with intellectual and scholastic kids would be a nice change. Well, it was at least a change. Young overly intelligent minds are a dangerous thing. I should know, I *was* one. Most of the summer was fine. During the day, the kids would be off at classes, and I would sleep, put in some time in the theatre, and go to my one class. In the evenings there were various events scheduled in a vain effort to turn these nerdy introverts into cool extroverts. They usually bombed. (FYI--hiring a magician to entertain junior brainiacs is *not* a good idea. I almost felt sorry for the poor guy). Seeing as how the camps lasted for 2 weeks, there was always something big planned for the weekends. A field trip of some kind or other. The worst of them was the weekend we took the Math Camps *camping*--you know, tents, campfires, the great outdoors, that kind of thing.

I was against the plan from the start but as I was low-man on the totem pole, I was ignored. So the big weekend came, we packed the kids into the bus and headed to the state park just up the road. Roger--the oh-so chipper head councilor-- had paired himself up with me. He seemed to feel that having him around would turn me into a happy person also--rather than driving me into homicidal fits.

I showed the kids the proper way to set up a tent, explained how tight the ropes should be, the best angle to put the spikes in at, and all the rest, then sat back and let them at it. Rather than digging into the problem like normal kids, they started pulling out calculators and note pads and working out formulae. They were going to find the *real* best way to set up a tent, and show that I was inadequate to the job. So formulae were flying left and right. Sines, cosines, arc-tangents, Pythagorus, and all the rest. And the tents were not getting put up.

In an effort to get things moving, I walked up to a group of the kids, looked at the formulas, made the proper “hmmm” and “uh-huh” noises, and promptly pointed out that “while those numbers and sines are all well and good, they really don’t have anything to do with the real world” and walked away.

Soon, they were putting their knowledge to practical use--and failing miserably. Putting up a tent is as much an art as it is a science. And these kids had no mind for art. Knowing that I and the other councilors would have to put the tents up for the kids, I was feeling slightly smug. I walked over to Roger, and gave him a wonderful “I told you so. It’s plainly obvious that this weekend is a failure.”

“A failure?” he responded. “what makes you say it’s a failure?”

“Roger, open you eyes, everywhere you look there’s sines and poor tents!”