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and then turns back. “How’s your memoir going?”
    “Pretty good. I’m up to the part where my parents sent me away to a camp straight out of
Lord of the Flies.
”
    She smiles and walks off.
             
    Mr. Parke says memoir is not just about the events in our lives, but also what those events reveal about who we are. He says that every story we tell should have an under-story, and everything we write should serve to illuminate the themes in our lives. When I started on this chapter of my memoir, he asked me to think about what it was really about. Is it my parents’ inexplicably poor judgment? Is it my unexpected and ultimately humiliating sexual awakening? Is it my earliest memories of my own insignificance?
    I was six years old when my parents first sent me to camp, and the themes of my life were beginning to come into sharper focus.

THE TIME MY PARENTS SENT ME TO A CAMP STRAIGHT OUT OF
LORD OF THE FLIES
    I have no idea how my parents selected Camp Greenwood for my inaugural camp experience, but it is hard to imagine they had any prior knowledge of the workings of that horrible place.
    At Camp Greenwood everyone had a military rank, and, predictably enough, distinctions were based on age. First graders were privates, second graders corporals, third graders sergeants, and so on up the ladder to eighth-grade generals. Although not officially stated in camp literature, it was understood that the higher your rank, the more power you had, and so life was not good for those of us at the bottom of the to tempole.
    Every afternoon the counselors would gather the whole camp together to gamble. The way it worked was this: the counselors would divide themselves into two teams and compete against each other in some sport. The campers had to bet on which team would win. We would signal our choices by sitting in one of the two designated spectator areas. If we were lucky enough to choose the winning team, we would form a long line, by rank, and receive candy. If we were on the losing side, we would be summarily dismissed to get ready for the next activity. The biggest problem with the system—aside from the fact that the counselors, not the kids, were playing; aside from the fact that some kids were getting candy and others were getting nothing; aside from the fact that kids were betting on adults—was the fact that no matter who won or who lost, the older kids always ended up with the candy anyway. It was called the tribute system, and it ensured that high-ranking officials on the losing side would not feel resentment toward low-ranking officials on the winning side and end up inflicting some form of corporal punishment.
    The bathrooms, I quickly learned, were places to avoid at all costs. Older boys routinely peed in the sinks, overstuffed the toilets, and drew disturbing pictures on the walls. On one occasion, before I understood how things worked at Camp Greenwood, I sat down in a stall only to be plunged into pitch-darkness as a group of boys turned off the lights and ran away laughing. Too frightened to move, too frightened to scream, I sat there for what seemed like an eternity until my counselor realized I was missing and came looking for me. “Got caught with your pants down,” he said, laughing. “You’ll learn.”
    And I did learn. I learned that the lake and the pool were the best places in the camp to urinate, and I came to savor the moment each day when I could just let myself go and feel the warmth of my urine spread around me. I never thought about the fact that many of my fellow campers were probably doing the same thing, but it would explain why the counselors never went in the water themselves and why they often referred to the pool as the toilet bowl.
    It was in the camp swimming pool that I made a truly remarkable discovery. I was standing in the water with my stomach pressed up against the side when I began to feel a tingling sensation. I adjusted myself a little and the feeling became more