Look- I know this is going to come as a huge shock to many of you- but I was a gigantic nerd in Middle School. I know, I know- it’s practically inconceivable. I bet you’re all thinking:

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But it’s true. I was one of the great nerds of all time. Just picture me as a young Bill Gates with no potential for greatness only through some baffling accident of Ashkenazic eugenics I was both short and lanky at the same time with a prehensile teen moustache and a gigantic hairy mole on my face so that I looked like I fell asleep early during a slumber party on the USS Enterprise and woke up with half a tribble glued to my face (Sulu and Chekhov were giggling uncontrollably but Spock was all “I do not understand why you call these ‘practical jokes’. There does not seem to be anything practical about them. Fascinating.’ And Kirk was all ‘Jesus Christ, Spock, lighten up already. I liked you better when you had Pon Farr. Now I’ve gotta wait like, what, six more years for you to pull that enormous rod out of your ass and fight me to the death with it while all the big brain dudes are sitting around us like ‘5 million quadrooles on the white guy.’’#mixingmyepisodesup #sosueme #nerd)

Anyhow- when I wasn’t obsessively video taping Star Trek marathons which is totally something I absolutely never did and there’s no way that you or my recent Google search “Converting VHS to digital files free software” can prove otherwise, I was cruising the Open Bar Mitzvah scene of upper-middle class suburban Albany (you know- Niskayuna GE middle manager rich- not like, la-di-da cardiologist’s daughter Loudonville rich) drowning my sorrows in extremely tiny cups of Manischevitz and trying to score a pity slow dance to La Isla Bonita with the freakishly tall girl so I could discreetly nudge her boobs with the top of my head.

All things must come to an end, though, and eventually I graduated from my little private Jewish middle school and entered the big, bad public high school in my neighborhood, Bethlehem Central High School (in point of fact- neither big nor bad. More like West Beverly High without the token black kid carrying a backpack in the background.). At this point- things really started to turn around for me! Or, rather, I started to turn around every time someone yelled “faggot!” in the hallways because that was evidently my new nickname. In fact, it wasn’t til I was in high school that I realized how good I actually had it in middle school. I mean, in middle school I was invited to parties, I was talking to girls, I was even playing basketball.  Hell, compared to High School Eric, Middle School Eric was the love child of Kevin McHale and Fonzy (Jewish on Fonzy’s side.) In High School, though, I was cut from the Freshman basketball team- a decision which the coach recently described as “hands down the easiest of my entire career. Seriously- I agonized more about cutting the blind kid” and I would have been a pariah, if the other pariahs had let me eat at their lunch table. The only highlight of the year was getting cast as an FBI agent in You Can’t Take it With You. While this tragically inspired me to pursue a career in theatre rather than law enforcement, I doubt I would have made it out of the Police Academy cause I don’t like shooting black people. They may leave that little aspect of police academy training out of the Steve Gutenberg movies- but let’s keep it real- the first time Michael Winslow busted out his super-realistic machine gun noises, he would have been gunned down by Darren Wilson for sure, especially if he was wearing a hoodie. #mixingmyraciallymotivatedkillingsup #sosueme #honkey.

And, I’m pretty sure that high school would have just kept right on sucking for four solid years like Obama’s second term if I hadn’t gotten a job during the summer between Freshman and Sophomore year at Camp Givah, a Jewish Day Camp in the Helderberg, ahem, “Mountains” just south of Albany between a patch of woods, a swamp and a smallish marijuana field. Now I know when you hear “Jewish Camp” a lot of you get all Arbeit Mach Frei but there was nothing at all Auschwitzy about this place. For one thing, nobody was trying to murder all of us there and also we didn’t have working showers. I mean, this wasn’t some fancy La-di- Dachau type fancy pants camp- just a small little hippie Jewish camp in the woods.

I should be clear, also, that this wasn’t my first experience with Camp Givah- my parents actually sent me there as a camper the summer after fourth grade- the first summer I spent in the US after moving back from Israel. They chose to send me there after an absolutely disastrous two weeks at the local Jewish Community Center Sports Camp where I learned how to be picked last in a wide range of exciting sports. It’s true- whether we were playing baseball, kickball, soccer, basketball, dodgeball, football, floor hockey or water polo- I could always count on being chosen after Down Syndrome Girl and the blind kid. (Damn that blind kid! My athletic nemesis! He was the Magic to my Bird in the sense that I had no real athletic ability and he threw a great no-look pass.) Now, some would say that being chosen last like that would build character- and I suppose that’s true, if the character in question is Richard the Third cause when I wasn’t being humiliated for my physical deficiencies I was plotting sweet, sweet revenge.

Camp Givah, though, was way more chill. Sure, I still got picked last, but at least everyone laughed at my jokes about it. To really understand Camp Givah- you have to understand the 80’s. I know that we now like to think of the 80’s as the decade of conspicuous consumption but there was more to this era than slicked back hair, shoulder pads, cocaine and Swatches. Because, you see, there was a flipside to the Hateful Rich- and that was the Loveably Broke- for every Bette Midler and Danny DeVito there was a Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater; for every Mr. Burns there was a Homer Simpson; for every Molly Ringwald in Breakfast Club there was a Molly Ringwald in Pretty In Pink and for every JCC Sports Camp there was a Camp Givah (Givah is Hebrew for “Goonies”.) The JCC had sparkling clean locker rooms fully equipped with hot and cold running water and showers – and lockers! Camp Givah had a dilapidated shed (dilapidated shed was the dominant architectural style of the camp) split by a partition into Boys & Girls changing rooms fully equipped with splintering benches, ancient carpet with appearance and aroma of rotten eggplant, and a covert hole drilled in the partition between the Boys and Girls sections by skeezy Russian immigrant counselor Alex whose mission in life was to be a disturbing cautionary tale for the horrors that would occur when we got the Soviet Jews out of Russia #becarefulwhatyouprotestfor. The JCC Sports Camp had heated indoor and outdoor Olympic size swimming pools. Camp Givah had one smallish outdoor pool which was so cold in the morning that it could easily be used in viral videos to raise money for ALS but thankfully was warmed by sunshine and urine in time for the afternoon. Hell- all you really need to know to understand Camp Givah was the Camp Song that we sang enthusiastically every morning on the decommissioned prison bus that carted us up there: “Machaneh Givah- Ha Yoter Tovah Bekol America” – or, in English, “Camp Givah- the Better Camp in All America”- not the best or anything- just “better”. Better than what? Who knows! Grammatically incorrect? Who cares! All we had to know what that the bus didn’t break down and the driver was sober enough to get us to camp- LET’S SING! The JCC Sports Camp might have had the Albany Jewish community’s collar up and cardigan preppy elite- but Camp Givah was a place for….the rest of us. I didn’t learn to be cool at Camp Givah, I learned I didn’t have to be.  And I learned a whole bunch of other stuff, too- things like:

No Matter How Late You Stay Up- the Kids are Still Gonna Show Up in the Morning

Although Givah was a day camp, they instituted a program where the Counselors in Training and Junior Counselors could stay overnight a couple of days a week with limited supervision. The called this program, Bogrim which is a Hebrew word for “YOU’RE LETTING THE COUNSELORS IN TRAINING AND JUNIOR COUNSELORS STAY OVERNIGHT A COUPLE OF DAYS A WEEK WITH LIMITED SUPERVISION????? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND??????”” (It’s weird that Hebrew has a word for that. Very succinct language. There’s also a word for “we’re not committing genocide- they are”.) Well, if you know teenagers or have teenagers or remember your teenage years (I’m pretty sure you’re not a teenager if you’re reading this because there’s no possible way you could have read this far) you know that if you leave a bunch of teenage misfits to their own devices they’re gonna stay up all night lying with their heads in each other’s laps solving every one of the world’s problems except how to get to second base. The one thing they sure as shit aren’t gonna do is “sleep”. Well, we did stay up all night. And it was awesome. And the next morning, at 8 AM sharp, busloads full of children showed up ready for us to Counsel them and no matter how tired we were, we had to do it. And guess what? We did! I mean, sure, we didn’t do it well– I’m sure that “fruit loop necklaces” “extended nap time” and “let’s run in circles until everyone vomits!”  were not the highlight of any kids’ summer- but, the important thing is that we got our jobs done. And that’s where I learned a valuable lesson that would serve me throughout my adult life- it’s totally cool to stay up all night and be completely irresponsible as long I can drag my sorry butt into work and do a half assed job the next day. Hurray!! Let’s hear it for being responsibly irresponsible! It’s what made me the hungover slacker I am today. And by “today” I mean- right now. Crap. Is it time for work already?

Of course we weren’t left entirely to our own devices. The Camp directors weren’t that crazy (I’m kidding, of course. They were that crazy. Fucking certifiable). There were always a couple of adults with us, if by “adults” you mean college kids who couldn’t get hired at Ground Round. And my favorite of these “adults” was our lead counselor. His name was Steve- but we all called him by his Hebrew name “Peace”…..or “Hello”- depending on how you choose to translate it (just don’t call him Annyong). “Peace” (Shalom) (Shloey to those of us pretended we were cool enough to know him well) was my Hippie Yoda. He is the one who inspired me to grow my hair long (although it just turned into a giant unruly Jewfro), play guitar (even though I have absolutely no musical talent)  and wear wire rimmed glasses (even though my skin is allergic to the metal and I developed a weird rash #worsthippieever).  He also taught me one of the other really important lessons I learned at Camp Givah- namely

All the Lyrics to Leaving on a Jet Plane, I Know You Rider and Cat’s In the Cradle.

Look, when I was in high school, you were defined entirely by the music you listened to- sort of like today, it’s all about your peanut allergies and how autistic you are. And when I entered Camp Givah I had no real allegiances. My musical tastes were sort of “preppy agnostic” – I figured Kasey Casem knew what he was talking about, generally supported Michael Jackson and knew all too well the tragedy of grandma getting run over by a reindeer. At Camp Givah, though, my mind was expanded- and I’m not just talking about the night we drank a bottle of Manischewitz smoked all the oregano in the kitchen-although, admittedly that was pretty fantastic  despite a bad case of pizza lung. No- I’m talking about Classic Rock. Every meal-time, after singing the blessing (long version, bitchez!) and the obligatory song about how the world is a narrow bridge, so stop being such a fuckin’ pussy about it (those are the words- look it up!) he would take out his guitar and school us in the ways of the Great Rabbis: Reb Garcia, the Venerable and Holy Rabbis Simon and Garfunkel, Rebbe Robert “Bob Dylan Sounds Less Jewey” Zimmerman of Minneapolis and, of course, the Holy Trinity: Crosby, Stills, Nash…and Young. Sometimes. Crap. Holy Quadrangle. Whatever. What’s the damn problem with Y anyhow? Sometimes it’s a vowel, Sometimes Neil Young is involved- it’s like the goddamn College Freshman of the alphabet. One night it’s shaving it’s head in the bathroom at an Ani Di Franco concert and the next it’s pledging a sorority and blowing lacrosse players in the bathroom of an Ani Di Franco concert. I mean, sure, I know everybody loves Ani DiFranco- but make up your mind, Y!

It wasn’t just Shloey and his guitar, though. Much as the traditions of our ancient forefathers were passed down orally from one generation to the next, distorting and changing slightly with every generation, dating all the way back to Mount Sinai- so were the tapes of the Classic Rock Masters passed down to me, copies of copies of copies distorting and changing with every recording dating all the way back to some dude’s older brother who got his Dad’s record collection after his folks split up in ’85 and his Dad didn’t have room for records or children at his new condo in Phoenix with Shirleen. The Who, The Stones, The Dead and Zeppelin  – oh God, Zeppelin. It’s like my whole life I had been eating Soylent Green and Star Trek style blue green cubes plopped out by the Replicator (they say it tastes totally like Bajoran Groatcake but you can totally tell) and Led Zeppelin plopped down a great big bloody slab of prime rib with a bottle of whiskey and let me gorge myself at the trough of awesomeness. It was music I could listen to with my crotch- which was all the more significant as it was the only action my crotch was seeing. I even wrote a poem about how Classic Rock made me feel. It was called “Orgasm of Rock” and it was rejected by my High School Literary Magazine in a decision which the editor would later describe as “hands down the easiest of my entire academic career. Seriously, I agonized more about making the blind kid co-editor. That kid can write” DAMN YOU BLIND KID!!! I’d give you the finger if you cared.

Anyhow, the point of all this was that Camp Givah was where I discovered my musical subculture. I entered the Camp as a lost little Lacoste wearing wanna-be preppy lamb and emerged a full blown Classic Rock Hippie- complete with guitar I couldn’t play, Jew-Fro I couldn’t comb and wire rimmed glasses that were slowly turning my face green. I had arrived! I wasn’t one of those pathetic trend following sheep any more. No sir! I was a true individual – just like all the other hippies!

But finding a musical subculture to belong to wasn’t the most important thing I got out of Camp Givah. No sir! Hell, I could have learned about classic rock from any marker sniffing degenerate dating my sister. No- the real lesson I learned there- and the one that saved my adolescence from misery and despair (not the fun kind of adolescent misery and despair, but the real stuff) was the ancient Jewish proverb:

Find Yourself a Dungeon Master and Make For Yourself A Friend

A couple of years ago I turned 40 and, while that is kind of depressing, as any Ebola sufferer will tell you, it beats the alternative. To celebrate this milestone, there was only one thing I wanted to do. Well, that’s not exactly true- there were a whole bunch of things I wanted to do but they were all illegal, medically dangerous or required me to learn how to drive. Shudder. Anyhow, I chose to celebrate by gathering the closest friends I had made at Camp for a reunion at a rented house in the desert. It was, hands down, the easiest decision in my Birthday Celebrating career- even though I didn’t invite the blind kid (Dude’s not on Facebook- not my fault. Plus his job as an internationally renowned tenor keeps him hoppin’.)

Anyhow, we hadn’t seen each other much in recent years and our paths had all diverged somewhat over the years- but when we got together it – well, I can’t exactly say nothing had changed – that’s like saying nothing changed with Mark Hammill’s face between Star Wars and Empire. We were old and fat and bald and stressed- more Homer than Bart and well on our way to Grandpa. Still, there was a connection there- after all, we weren’t merely camp friends- ours was a brotherhood forged in battle. And I’m not talking about Desert Storm or Kosovo or any of the other random little wars of the 90’s (Ahh Kosovo. Adorbs) I’m talking about real battle – battle with aboleths, kobolds, draconians and orcs (did we really fight orcs? God that seems so cliché. What a poseur monster- it’s like the Automatic for the People of monsters. ) For two years, starting at camp, we engaged in a practically non-stop D&D campaign. It wasn’t even a game- just an endless conversation that lasted for two years interwoven between inside jokes, “deep” philosophizing, deep dark secrets (mine always sucked), wonderfully idiotic plans for the future, and long sessions drinking our parent’s liquor strategically so they wouldn’t notice how much was gone. Ahh, so many mornings I remember getting up early to clean puke off the carpet before anyone else was up. Southern Comfort and Resolve is still the drink of my youth. The point is, though, that when I was with these guys, for the first time since coming back from Israel, I felt like I was home. And when we saw each other two years ago and again earlier this month- well, that, was everything visiting home should be and almost never is.

To be clear, we didn’t actually play D&D when we got together. Our erstwhile Dungeon Master’s wife has informed him that if he plays D&D again, she’ll add another D to the game- “Divorce”. So, yeah, Cards Against Humanity it was- which was still pretty awesome. Finally my strategy of using pedophilia jokes in card games paid off! I can’t tell you how many rounds of Go Fish I lost at Michael Jackson’s slumber parties (Woody Allen’s clarinet lessons is also an acceptable punch line.)

So- yeah- if you live in the Greater Albany Area (or Capital Region as everybody in Albany wishes you would call it already) and you have a super cool kid like that braid guy at the Emmy’s whose got tons of friends and is great at sports- by all means send them to something like the JCC Sports Camp. You can say hi to the blind kid when you pick up your son. But if your kid is, well, not so much- then I think you know where to send them – Machaneh Givah the Better Camp in all America.

Alright. That’s enough living in the past. Time to get real and get back to living in the present- the Every Simpsons Ever Marathon is on. Doh! Oh well- at least I’ll have something to write about for my next post. Woo Hoo! Now THAT is hands down the easiest decision of my blogging career.