Read My Mother Was Nuts for Free Online Page B

liked. What was the point? You hit the ball and walked. I was bored in five minutes. I liked sports where you ran.
    I was assigned to bunk 7, where I became instant friends with Dede Levy from Long Island, Sherry Arbur, Barbara Peltzman (or Peltzy) from Forest Hills, Nancy Cohen, and Jill Rubenson and Andy Stein, both of whom were superb athletes. We spent the next four summers together, trading stories and teaching one another about music, boys, and our changing bodies. This was a time when no girl’s parents talked to her about that kind of thing, so, for instance, if one of us started our period, it became a group activity.
Who’s got a tampon? Who knows how to work a tampon? Who’s got a mirror? Ouch, this hurts
.
    We shared everything. Our different backgrounds melted away. We were bunkmates and friends for the rest of our lives.
    I recited the Sabbath prayers on Friday nights like everyone else, and learned the history of the Onibar Indians who had first settled the area. Eventually we figured out that Onibar was Rabino spelled backward. Many years later, my brother wrote for Jack Paar and hedid a bit called “Letters from Camp,” which included the joke: Dear Mom and Dad, we found out Camp Nehoc is not an Indian name. It’s Cohen spelled backward.
    Dear Mom & Dad,
How’s Nanny? How’s Grandpa? I hope everyone is good.
I love camp. Send chocolate.
    Love,
Penny
    Each session included an athletic competition known as the Color War. It lasted a week, and all the campers, girls and boys, divided into teams. On the boys’ side, you were either blue or buff, and on the girls’ side, you were green or buff. During Color War, you had to sing to your color. We sang to buff. “Buff is the team with the gleam of victory in its eye … B-U-F-F is the team! Rah-rah-rah …” It was hard to get excited about singing to buff.
    There were also weekly shows featuring original songs and dances. Every bunk did one, as did the older staff, the counselors, and the waiters and waitresses. These performances were taken seriously, and the bar was extremely high. Mark “Moose” Charlap, who wrote the music for the Broadway production of
Peter Pan
, had been the musical director for several years, and he was succeeded by seventeen-year-old Juilliard student Marvin Hamlisch. He wrote new songs every week.
    At thirteen, I took a year off to attend Camp Edgemont, a horseback riding camp in Deposit, New York. My mother was upset. “It’s not kosher!” she said. What did it matter? We weren’t even Jewish. I spent the next two summers back at Geneva, working as a waitress. It was a coveted job; you received tips and didn’t have to pay for the summer session.
    Even better, I was assigned the staff table. That’s where I got to know Marvin Hamlisch. He sat at my table. I knew all of his food allergies.
    Midway through that summer, the waitresses’ bunk burned down.My mother thought it was my fault. By this time I was smoking cigarettes, and she assumed that I’d left one burning. It shows how highly she thought of me.
    Eventually, though, one of the other waitresses confessed to setting the fire. She turned out to be a pyromaniac.
    We all were just grateful that drama didn’t get in the way of the even more exciting end-of-summer musical. My friend Caren from back home was the dance counselor. She worked all summer on the choreography, much of which she credited to my mother, whom she adored. She took lessons in the ballroom for years. As testimony to the regard she had for my mother, she used Marvin as her rehearsal pianist but insisted on having my mother play the piano for the actual show. In fact, her parents drove my mother to camp.
    It’s mind-boggling to think that she trusted my mother’s playing more than she did Marvin’s. What can I say? I think it was because my mother knew how to jump around in the music if someone made a mistake. Most Julliard students can probably play that way, too. But they don’t.
    At the