Scars...

When I was a teenager I went to summer camp every year at El Porvenir Christian Camp. First as a camper then as a cook's assistant. Puppet Music camp was my favorite. For those of you that don't know there was a time in my life I wanted to grow up and work with Jim Henson.

Our youth director did what's called puppet ministry. Yeah, I know, you're rolling your eyes. But it was a thing, probably still is a thing, in the Christian church. Something to hook the kids. Kids love puppets. Puppets being goofy and ALSO talking about Jesus? Well that's just great.

But I was good at puppetry. I was never confident in my singing, the other thing our youth minister specialized in. My sister had told me how terrible I was at it from a very young age and no amount of anyone else saying I had a perfectly fine voice could get her "You sound like a dead cow" insult out of my head.

And yes, dead cow. Which doesn't even make any sort of fucking sense. Dead cows are silent. A dying cow? Now that would be terrible, but a dead one? Didn't matter, it crippled my self confidence around singing to the point where I couldn't muster the bravery to even try out for choir in high school.

But puppetry? I was good at that and she hadn't ever thought to insult my puppetry, but who would? So when I aged into our youth group performing group I slotted into that and off I went. We would tour every summer with whatever program we had practiced all year. Some singing, some acting, some puppets. It really was fun. (there is a whole other side to this about the youth director that I've talked about that wasn't fun, but at the time I didn't know about any of that so my memories of it are good ones, right up until they weren't but that's another story)

So anyway, our youth minister set up a Puppet Music week at the camp we all went to. I say we all because it was all of the sister churches in New Mexico and parts of Texas that went. Every year when you went to camp we New Mexico kids would come home with Texas accents from hanging around those kids and I have to think some of them responded to exciting news with a loud EEEEE!!! at least once or twice.

I got a camp boyfriend my first summer of Puppet Music camp. He was from Amarillo so we didn't see each other except for that week. We wrote back and forth all year sporadically but long distance was still expensive so no phone calls, and no way to see each other either. The next year we were both at camp and the first day we went for a walk together. We were like 12 or 13 at the time so don't be thinking anything other than literally we went for a walk.

While we were headed down to the stream I tripped over some hidden barbed wire. Got a nasty scrape that lead to a scar I still have on my leg. It's the same color as the rest of my leg now, just a thin divoted line of a scar that never filled back in. For years I sort of viewed it romantically. Like I had an actual permanent reminder of our summer romance. Awww....

The summer between my sophomore and junior year we were on a Bible Bowl trip (this had replaced the performing group) and coming back we stopped in Amarillo. My parents met the bus there and picked me up. That way I could visit with my Amarillo boyfriend, and then the plan was to drop down and visit a college in southern New Mexico where I had a different boyfriend who was trying to get me to go to college down there. I had some scholarships to a Christian college in the area so it would have been a decent idea. And yes, my parents realized that there were two different boys in the mix that I was visiting.

My mother said one of the sweetest things ever during that trip. I hadn't seen the Amarillo boy in a couple of years at that point, my parents had met him both years at camp at the end of the week performances so they knew him. But after he picked me up at the hotel to take me to his youth group meeting my mom said she had been relieved because I had grown into a really lovely young lady and she was afraid he hadn't matched me. Awww....my mom was shallow. Isn't that sweet?

It was sweet. But it was a bit misguided. He had matched me in the looks. In fact when I was waiting for him I remember standing out on the balcony of our hotel room, it looked out over the atrium of the hotel, and seeing a boy standing looking out from one of the other landings. I thought, he's cute what a shame I can't be meeting him. Of course I was meeting him. He had grown up to be really cute.

Not really lovely though.

It was not a great evening. I won't go into detail, but it was not great on a scale that makes great very far away. The next summer at a camp retreat he, the southern New Mexico boyfriend, and another boy I had dated in Albuquerque (I dated a lot) met up. They got to talking about me and the SNM boy and Abq boy ended up pissing in the Texas boy's boots. As a rule I generally stayed friends with the boys I dated. They were good friends in that moment. As the SNM boy said pissing in his boots was the calm reaction to what he said.

Looking at the scar on my leg this week while I was working out I thought back to the time when I thought of it as a romantic thing. Then I thought about the emotional scars he left a few years later and was glad I never considered those to be romantic. I know a lot of young women do that. They take the pain and try to turn it beautiful. My parents had such a good, strong, relationship that I was never tempted by that. Drama was just drama, not some sort of misguided declaration of passion and love.

We get to choose what our scars teach us, I think. This one of mine reminded me to look out for hidden barbed wire in beautiful scenery. And then it faded away to nothing but an old memory. One with a happy ending. If you count thinking of him with boots filled with piss as a happy ending.

And I do.