Now, none of that had to do with bread. I'm man enough to admit that. And what could I possibly have to gab about when it comes to bread, when it's universally recognized as one of the best things in the world? Even people who claim to be fake allergic to it know that bread is great (don't even get me started on my Jerry Seinfeld-esque gluten routine ((but seriously, what's the deal with it?)). So what inspired this last minute celebration? Well I know I missed out on Canada Day and I know I missed out on July 4th, so the next most important thing to this continent has to be bread right? Also I was reading Bryan Lee O'Malley's new book Seconds (which you should pick up immediately, especially if you were any kind of fan of Scott Pilgrim), which I purchased on Canada Day if that counts for anything, and well.....nope, I don't wanna ruin it for you. But lets just say that if there were ever a need for a spokesperson for bread than Bryan Lee O'Malley::Bill Cosby, Bread::Pudding.
It's just. That. Simple.
Now how did bread play its part in my camp experience? Simple, a little thing called Bread War.
War, as we've all learned from movies, is nothing to stomach. It's torn families, countries, friends, in-laws, acquaintances, offices, bars and heck, even stars against each other. Bread, as we've learned from consumption, is something to stomach. So what happens when two unlike things come together like that? There's probably some science rule that some old man came up with a long time ago, but in my experience it means testing the limitations of people you've only known for two-and-a-half weeks.
Contrary to Edwin Starr (and then later made immensely popular by China's own Jackie Chan! ((disclaimer: I've never seen Rush Hour)), war is good for absolutely something. I've got nothing more to add to that, it was just something I thought of and would hate myself for not adding into this beautiful opus I've complied.
So lets see, ah yes at Timber Wolf Lake, the camp where I was for almost a month, food was made fresh daily there. While I can't personally attest to the making of it, I do know as well as trust my fair share of people who had a hand in preparing it every day. That means that bread was made fresh every day which also meant that yeh, I had my fair share of bread while I was there. It was great. It's cliché for a reason to say that freshly baked bread is one of your favorite smells/foods, because it really is that great. I can't think of a single crumby crummy loaf of bread that I had while I was at camp. So if you're on the fence about attending a Young Life camp in some capacity and bread is the decider for you, venture there confidentially, sir or madam. Unless of course you have some disease that you can spread by just looking at someone like Medusa or The Gorgon; If that's the case than I implore you not to go. In fact you should just stay indoors or wear something to cover up your eyes and leave us normal folk to our bread in peace.
The fun thing about this freshly baked bread was that there was a lot of it and its better to have more bread than less bread, especially with how fast kids' metabolisms are moving these days! So there was generally extra bread to be stolen taken after dinner. So I started taking the bread, because I definitely knew it was going to a good home (my stomach) than where it gonna go (you don't even wanna know). A safe home. I was like Prisoner 24601, but proud and more importantly not French. Or maybe I was more like Aladdin? No, no, I don't want to be Aladdin. He was a street rat with questionable fashion taste. I'll stick with ol' Jean Valjean (even if that name is a little lazy, Victor Hugo). Did I get some looks, maybe some side eye for this new lifestyle I'd taken on? Definitely, but it was always worth it. It always is when "it" is bread. I had to endure a lot of jokes involving communion/Eucharist so this wasn't as easy as you might think, but again, worth it.
On one of the first nights of this newly acquired lifestyle a challenge was presented to me from one Michael "Mikey" Hoehn with a loaf of bread. He asked me to put the loaf of bread I had in my hand underneath the pillow of one Walter "Rainmaker" DeDoncker before he went to sleep. It was harmless, it was fun, it was the spark that lit the fuse, we just didn't know it yet. While Rainmaker was in the bathroom brushing his teeth(?) I slipped the bread under his pillow and then it was a matter of waiting it out to see if he would notice. It took place in my room so it was only natural for me to stay, but Mikey was an outsider, technically; when Rainmaker exited the bathroom and saw him still in there, he just had to think something was going on (and he was right to). There was some light conversation going on between the three of us and then like a pin-pulled grenade, a loaf of bread came whizzing by Mikey and I.
The only experience similar to this that I can think of is when Confederate soldiers fired on Ft. Sumpter on April 12, 1861 or maybe when those British Red Coats (formal nickname: Lobsters) fired on those probably drunk people of Boston on March 5, 1770. Or maybe it was something closer to how Ben Affleck or Josh Hartnett's characters felt on the morning of December 7, 1941 in that movie Pearl Harbor. The point is that it was bigger than we could ever imagine.
A day passed and the bread was forgotten about, at least on my part, I'm sure I had bigger and brighter things on my mind at the time. But it was the day after when I noticed something as I was moving my pillows to my nap bunk (there was no one sleeping above me in my bunk bed, so the bottom bunk was used for sleepin' and the top bunk was used for nappin') when I saw before my eyes a loaf of bread, not dissimilar to the one placed under Rainmaker's pillow two nights prior. My eyes had to've done this and then my brain had to start moving quickly. The first thing that hit was, "so that's what was under my pillow last night?" the second was "what do I do with this now?" I sit with it for a day and weighed my options, because I had a lot of them. I could've thrown the thing away and be done with it, but that would be the not fun thing to do.
Instead, I waited until Mikey wasn't in his room and put it in his backpack-NO! I waited until he was asleep, then I snuck into his room and slipped it into the pouch in his bag where he keeps his wallet and keys for town runs. It was not discovered until the next afternoon. Its next destination was a hit on me and to the bed yet again. This time it was placed less strategically and more visibly underneath my sheets and mattress pad. Which meant I had to dig under my blanket, top sheet, fitted sheet and mattress pad to find the goiter. Subtlety was now no longer the object for some in this war; it's as if strategy had moved backwards from trench warfare to gorilla warfare. From Chess to Checkers. Ashes to ashes. It was a sad epiphany. Another sad epiphany: we never took pictures to commemorate these occasions.
On night four of that week I had gotten myself another new loaf of bread, a sort of pumpernickel (very underrated bread) and had kept it on my nap bunk along with most of my possessions because I'm pretty lazy. The next night it had apparently been left in its bag, but taped to the ceiling above me (the bottom of the top bunk) only it wasn't taped well enough so it fell before I ever laid eyes on it. But it did serve as a bit of a warning of sorts. A warning I respected that took us back to Chess. I also felt like I had taken an unjust number of hits as of late so the only natural thing to happen was an alliance, but first I had to break new ground. Up to that point we'd been keeping our hits close and away from our jobs. So that day I outsourced to an accomplice to sneak the loaf into the compartment that jet skis have, apparently, for Walter to find after he'd drive it that day (waterfront people, I tells ya!). this was the same night of a shipment, so I found a moment to sneak into Mikey's bag, steal his keys and sneak out to his the camp's minivan and buckle in a loaf in the back seat. (Fun fact: that evening I could just be seen walking around with a bag of bread-I even played FourSquare with it and got puhretty far.)
 |
| Me with the |
I then got back to the room where Mikey was eating (some bread) and chattin' with some other Summer Staff guys. He greeted me warmly, not an uncommon thing for him to do and then the words came out of his mouth "hey we gotta get Walter, how much bread do you have?" And just like that, I was in the clear. Not only had I gotten away with two hits in one day, I had an alliance growing. Everything was coming up Milhouse! Sam. So Mikey and I, each with a loaf of bread in our hands, snuck to the leader lounge where Rainmaker was working on some kind of physics homework, the nerd. The leader lounge has two entrances/exits on its sides, so Mikey volunteered to take the one attached to the gym and I snuck around to the other side, bread in hand. There were windows around the room so we could see each other and we tried our darndest to synchronize our throws, but Voltron we are not. Mikey had gotten caught due to the loudness of doors and when I saw that the jig was up, I bolted. Real band of brothers thing we've got going. We rendezvoused back at Mikey's entrance to try again, but alas it was a failure. Don't get me wrong, we still threw the bread, but sneaky it was not.
Then as we three laughed like the schoolboys we were, remembering the good times we'd had, Mikey snuck a loaf into Rainmaker's laptop case behind his chair. I'd never been prouder. Actually I had: it was when I buckled in that loaf in his back seat, but other than that, few things compare. It was like watching your son hit a home run in T-Ball. Somewhere in-between the jet ski and minivan though, the original loaf was broken in half (the fury of Rainmaker knows no bounds) and then promptly put in two of my shoes. Checkers. It took half a day for the bread in the back seat to be found. That means 2-3 town runs were made before Mikey found the bread Miss Daisy-ed in his car. And what of the loaf in the laptop case? Promptly put into my portable coffee mug.
And after that we let some time pass. We let ourselves get comfortable; I left the bread in my coffee mug to show that we needed to recharge our scheming batteries, we were getting to comfy with our game of checkers! And while at the ropes course an idea was whispered into my ear: take out the pillow and replace it with just so many loafs of bread. It was a genius idea, because then Rainmaker's out on a pillow and I had a bag of Garlic Bread waiting in my room like a powder keg, just waiting to be tapped. So before our Christmas dinner, Mikey and I set out to replace the pillow, because it was going to be our best time to do so. Neither of us had seen Rainmaker in a while so we figured we were in the clear (that day he actually confided to me by saying,"ya know, I haven't gotten breaded in a while, I'm getting a little worried), but alas in the middle of the act he walked in on us. And something about my loud/forced cough to indicate something was up to Mikey was not subtle. Checkers. But this was good, that we got caught, it had never happened before. We all needed to be taught a lesson.
And the lesson was, we've only got one more big hit in us. We needed to Ocean's 11 this one, or I guess Ocean's 13 it, considering that was the last big one for them. So Mikey and I meekly collected our garlic bread and shuffled off to throw it in the dumpster. But before the pillow incident, I just now remembered that I had stolen Rainmaker's keys to his Beamer (there's nothing more embarrassing than calling it that, right?) and hidden a loaf in his glove box. The thing was pretty barren, so I figured it'd be maybe a couple of weeks before he checked it and then he would find the loaf and we'd have the last laugh. Well we weren't going to let these Garlic Bread loafs go to waste, we weren't about that life, as we'd made clear that last week-and-a-half. So the keys were re-stolen and placed intricately in and around the Beamer. There was one under the gas pedal (pedal to the metal amirite), the back hammock behind the driver's seat, I'm pretty sure we put one on the dash, there was one put in-between the handle of the passenger's door and then some arranged in a precise and intricate code in the trunk.
Our greed had gotten to us, what was originally supposed to be a loaf of bread in the glove box turned into a massacre of garlic bread. And the worst part was, I liked it. It was all noticed the next day, every loaf of it. We went out with a bang and we'd wish it could've gone on longer. But our days at the camp were numbered and we had nothing left in us. And contrary to officer Carver, wars do end. Not always as we want to, but alas they do. Oh wait I forgot, the garlic bread wasn't the last hit, we also shoved a loaf into Rainmaker's water bottle on the last night we were in our cabin! Huzzah-huzzah!
No comments:
Post a Comment