No Pity Parties Allowed Here

My first experience of camp life was a YWCA camp at the Lake of the Ozarks, that's Missouri. My Grandfather was the chairman of the board of the Negro YMCA and my Grandmother was his equal at the YWCA so all was arranged. I was too young and quite far away from friends and my Mother and Father.

On Parents Day, of course, mine couldn't visit from East Chicago and I had my first known pity-party. I wrote the all time A-number one tear jerking letter home from camp. Upon getting my letter, my Mother took the Santa Fe Rail road from Chicago to Kansas City and when the bus pulled up at the end of my camp session, my Mother was waiting for me at the "Y".

I burst into tears when I saw her and rolled those tears into a king-sized tantrum--which really wasn't my style. For my last tantrum on record, I had been four and I performed in front of Marshall Fields on State Street during the Santa Claus parade. I was now seven.

Perplexed by my actions, my Mom said "I thought you would be glad to see me based on the letter you wrote home so why are you crying?" "I'm crying because I want to go back - I don't want to come home!!!"

I'm not really sure why my tantrum was rewarded but after much negotiating with everybody under the sun, I turned around and went back - dirty clothes, matted hair and all under the threat that if I ever wrote such a letter again, I would be on punishment until I was old enough that I could collect Social Security.

I woke up this morning at about 3:15 a.m. because I felt a pity-party coming on. Well more to the point, I felt water boarded without the water. I remembered my Mother's threat of punishment. I'm going off line today before I write a letter from camp and hit the send button.

Come back tomorrow. I will be writing about the parable of the bag of bags among other things after I finish my panel discussion at the fringe. I want to be a tassel - I'm not sure about being a fringe.