Older Brother 6th Grade Camp

I have a brother. He is the older brother. Older brothers are great because they’re like having notes to the test, but the notes are wrong, and are actively trying to cause you great harm.

When I was in 6th grade I went to 6th grade camp, and my brother went the year before me. So he had some ideas about how I should navigate this week up in the mountains. If you are not familiar with 6th grade camp, three different elementary schools go up to the mountains, you do hikes, talent shows, everybody gets a girlfriend, and you stay in a cabin.

My brother was like I got the playbook. Everything is gonna be chill for you. You just gotta do one thing.

You are gonna sleep in the cabins with the other kids from the elementary schools. Do not under any circumstances take a shit in the bathrooms. Because if you take a shit in the bathrooms, everyone is gonna think you are gay.

This is older brother wisdom. This is the kind of bullshit. I have two daughters and I actively listen for this kind of bullshit and I don’t hear it because it could only come from the mouth of an eldest son.

But at the time, this was a huge info drop. I was a 6th grader in the early 2000s. Literally, 9/11 happened two months before this trip. They were still pulling bodies from the rubble - we as a country were tense. I wasn’t gonna pull some gay stunt like shitting in a cabin bathroom.

I drive up to camp. We get there - I have to take a shit. Big no can do. Bathrooms are in the cabin. But I had to shit, so I did what I had to do - I held that shit for an entire week. This was 2001. Ricky Martin was a straight guy and New York City was covered in ash. The hunt for Osama Bin Laden had just begun. Do you honestly think I was going to take a second of focus away from America’s darkest hour?

My first idea - shitting outside - was crushed. Number one rule, no candy. Number two rule, no shitting outdoors. Attracts wildlife - mountain lions. Guess what? After Day 3 of endless mountain hikes, my poo child growing fingers and trying to claw its way out of my exhausted butthole? Let the mountain lion kill me.

Had a camp girlfriend. My camp girlfriend was a little sour. She essentially dated an old constipated man who never left the picnic benches. Just looking out at the lake, sitting on one buttcheek, trying to not have shit tear out of my stomach like a fucking alien.

Talent show was tough. For me, the whole week was a talent show. My group wanted to do jump rope and I wasn’t going to jump. No way I would jump. Absolutely not. I’m on rope. Don’t try and clap me in.

Camp ended. I was released. I went home, and I essentially shit the entire mountain I was just living on.

And my brother. Casually strolling by, asked me, why my shit was so big. And so I said, you. You made me make this. You told me no shitting. So I held my shit. And he said, hmmm, I guess you really like shit in your butt.