by Jenny Klein
I was the Charlie Brown of science camp. My parents had no way of anticipating the soul crushing role of the benchwarmer outcast at a camp designed for benchwarmer outcasts, but thinking science was as good an outlet as any, my mom blindly submitted the registration form. Things were okay for the first few minutes. Kids seemed nice enough, I thought maybe we’d learn about baby animals or how to study plant cells under a microscope. Our leaders, the enthusiastic gay duo, Steve and Larry, revealed that this camp was specific to aspiring inventors, grades two through seven. I was in third grade; when the girls there talked about their periods, I wondered why they didn’t just go to English camp if they liked grammar so much. My only friend was a fresh off the boat Russian kid who wore a green sweatshirt with green sweatpants every single day; he once told me that was the outfit he had worn on his journey to America, and never took it off because it was the color of money, but mostly because it was the only clothing he owned. I suppose his parents placed quite a bit of value on science. First thing, we made kites. Steve and Larry spent their focus on the talented older kids, while little ones like me and Sweatsuit were hung out to dry. In retrospect, that could also have been because Sweatsuit didn’t speak English and I never, ever asked for help, too afraid the others would discover how little I actually knew about science and how little I actually cared. All around me, complex combinations of long sticks and giant sheets of paper evolved into box kites, dragon kites, octagonal kites—the important thing was that they at least resembled what a kite should look like. I stood by helplessly as mine became a miserable mess of sticks, glue, and bits of paper that somehow ended up looking a lot like a ball of garbage. The worst part was how very aware I was of Charlie Brown’s misadventures with kites. Maybe it was Schadenfreude, maybe it was having something sure to count on, but I loyally followed Peanuts every morning in The Chicago Tribune. I liked the guy mostly because of how bad I felt for him, and now I was holding the weight of Charlie Brown’s failure in my hands; it was heavy, like my crappy kite. My kick had missed the football altogether and right then, my little eight-year-old brain sensed that I had become cartoonishly pitiful. So I tried to cover up my tracks: I added tails, bows, streamers, a set of wings. I even drew a picture of a kite sailing amongst clouds on the kite, so that it might understand our mutual goal. When we went out to an open field and Larry gave the order for all campers to take off running and release their kites, fifty kites rose into the air like fresh helium balloons. Mine didn’t move. It remained on the ground, motionless, as would be expected of a ball of garbage. Even Sweatsuit’s kite flew, which hurt most of all, because I didn’t think they had kites to play with in Russia. Seeing Larry approach me, the only kid left at the starting line, I quickly stepped on my kite with a satisfying crack. One of the big kids must have broken it, I explained. The big summer field trip was to the Motorola factory and museum. I don’t why I thought Motorola was an Italian canned food company, but I was more than disappointed after the hour-long trip on a school bus with no one to talk to, on the hottest Chicago summer day to date, to watch a two-hour documentary about how microchips were made, to be laughed at when I piped up and asked where they keep the ravioli. It was when a real-live inventor came to lecture that things really started to fall apart. His “life-changing invention” was a plastic hanger contraption that kept shirts from wrinkling. ‘Asshole’ wasn’t in my vocabulary yet, but he fit the description. He talked for three hours and when he chose me out of the audience to help demonstrate his great idea, I most certainly broke it (this time a genuine accident). The Asshole yelled at me, apparently it was his original prototype (which was stupid of him to bring to a group of kids) but I managed to turn his piece of junk into two pieces of junk. Now people were starting to take notice of me. I was making a name for myself: That Little Retarded Girl. For the final weeks of the program, all our time was devoted to creating an invention of our own. The room filled with an excited buzz, with talk of experimenting with electronics, levers and pulleys, simple machines. It was a big moment when I used a screwdriver to take apart my older sister’s pink hair crimper—but only so far as I could put it back together without trouble. This required removing three screws. I did this for five hours a day, for two weeks. Three screws out, three screws in. I looked busy as hell. Soon, my hard work had paid off: I had invented a working hair crimper, slightly modified from the original hair crimper, as one screw was missing and I had decorated the exterior with puffy paint rainbows. Sweatsuit had invented a special kind of drinking glass with chambers for ice, vodka, and other kinds of alcohol, so you could drink whatever you want and not have to dirty more glasses or get off the couch. His father loved it. When I looked around the room, it wasn’t just Sweatsuit who had created an original product with a function: one kid had used his mini basketball hoop to make an automatic dog feeder; one girl invented a stroller that moved smoothly over any surface, but everyone had something that worked. I looked down at my hair crimper and slowly realized that I hadn’t actually invented anything at all. My drive was renewed, my sense of purpose burned beneath me as I set out to prove that I was not as retarded as everybody thought I was. I took apart that pink hair crimper piece by piece until every bit was separated. Halfway to greatness now, I congratulated myself as Larry and Steve eagerly helped the other campers and often passed me with long, confused stares; I told myself over and over how stupid people thought toilets looked when they were first invented. With more purpose, more drive—sheer, unretarded drive—I re-connected the hair crimper parts in a way that I felt would be useful. After a week, I was finished. When Larry stood before me, he didn’t quite know what to do with the little girl who had tied hair crimper appendages together with bread twisties. “That’s a great Thingamajig,” he concluded. The Thingamajig was one of our earlier assignments for which we were told to take apart an appliance and build something wild and crazy. “It’s not my Thingamjaig, it’s my invention,” I told him. “For the Invention Convention.” “Oh.” Larry stared at the gadget a little longer, so I shook it to demonstrate. My invention clanged brilliantly. “It’s a bell?” asked Larry. “No, it’s The Attention Grabber,” I corrected. “It’s a bell.” “It grabs your attention. It’s not a bell.” “Bells are pretty much only used for grabbing attention.” “My Mom went down in the basement while I stood upstairs and shook it, and she said she could hear it and it definitely got her attention.” Larry thought for a moment. “And this is what you’re using for The Invention Convention when all the parents come?” he asked. I nodded, not understanding what the big deal was. I was an inventor. Larry patted me on the head. “I guess there’s one in every class,” he said. One what? I thought. What could that mean? What did my regular school year class have one of that I could possibly be? And the way he looked at me— Then I got it. One retarded kid. On the day of the Invention Convention, my mom didn’t show up. Sulking behind my Attention Grabber booth, I kind of hoped she wouldn’t come at all. After an hour, the raised eyebrows and sympathetic smiles from other parents wore thin on me. Finally, Sweatsuit’s Mom took a break from all the functional innovations to come have a look at mine. She picked it up carefully. “Vat eez eet?” “An Attention Grabber,” I muttered. “Vat do you do vis eet?” I took it from her, shook it, and handed it back. She shook it herself, and I nodded approvingly. “You should shake it harder,” I instructed. “Test how loud it gets.” She shook it again, this time more vigorously. “Harder.” I said. She shook it harder. “More! Shake it more!” Tiny pieces of my sanity chipped away with each order, but I didn’t care, because I relished the bread twisties straining under the weight of all the attention they were grabbing. “Louder!” I yelled, and the bottom half of the contraption fell to the floor, leaving nothing but a few loose pieces of wire tied to a pink plastic handle. Sweatsuit’s Mom felt terrible, but I assured her it was okay. Filled with a happiness I hadn’t known for weeks, I laid an OUT OF ORDER sign over what once was the one and only invention of my life. Relieved of my duties, I skipped into the hall but stopped immediately as my gaze rose toward the ceiling: the entire corridor was filled with big, yellow balloons that were supposed to resemble light bulbs. Attached to their strings were note cards with campers’ ideas written on them. I gingerly touched one: Using the explosive reaction between Mentos and Coca-Cola, we build a rocket that will take a man to Mars. –by Bill. Literally surrounded by all the other kids’ brilliant ideas, my temporary relief gave way to anxiety. When we had a good idea, we were supposed to raise our hands and share it with the group. If Larry and Steve liked it, we were allowed to make an Idea Balloon. I knew exactly where the box of yellow balloons was kept, I had thought about creeping back into the classroom when everyone was at lunch and making a few ideas myself. I had never gone through with it, but I also didn’t know the ideas were going to be displayed on Parents Day. I tapped Bill’s balloon one more time and it shocked my finger. I turned back to return to the auditorium. “Jenny?” I froze. I’d know that voice anywhere. “Jenny, are you out here?” My mom, just around the corner. I looked up at the hundreds of big yellow balloons and thought fast, much faster than the one and only slow-witted member of a class could ever dream of thinking. I jumped, I yanked, and I tore that note card off with a vengeance. Desperate for paper, I searched my pockets for something to write on. Pulling out an old 7-Eleven receipt, I scribbled the first thing that came to me, tied it to the balloon and released it. My idea floated up to the ceiling and rejoined the others, as if it had been there all along. My mom rounded the corner and walked down the hall toward me, beaming and proud, for no good reason that I could understand. “Look at all these balloons!” She exclaimed. “Do you have one?” I nodded and pointed to mine. “Electricity moves fast. –by Jenny,” she read off the 7-Eleven receipt for one small Slurpee. She smiled. “Do you want to go back into the Convention?” I shook my head. “Do you want to get pancakes instead?” she asked. I nodded, she took my hand, and we went out for pancakes. I had my usual, but this time it had that extra thing, that last day of school sweetness, last day of work, last day of unwanted day camp, Friday afternoons, Jewish holidays; that first day of real summer, bike riding and ice cream trucks. It tasted good; those whipped cream eyes and chocolate chip smile knew no defeat. Jenny Klein is a screenwriter from Skokie, Illinois. She moved to Los Angeles to attend the screenwriting program at the University of Southern California and completed her BFA in May 2007. She enjoys writing comedy, reading poetry and children's books, and learning about great white sharks. HOME |