A girl on my friends list (Froggy Tattoo, the same one who said I was ugly and should join an ugly modeling agency, thanks Froggy, I quit match.com because of that comment) just drove up Huntsville Alabama to be a counselor at space camp.
I have to say, I am a little jealous. I mean, it's space camp! And you are in charge! Now, don't get me wrong, its not that I hate kids, I have found that if you give them some cigars and a pint of Jim Beam they can be as fun as the next guy, however my real experience with kids its listening to ghetto kids scream for candy while standing in the check-out line of Walmart. I am not real fond of them.
But, really, how many ghetto kids would there be at space camp? I bet it is full of Chinese kids who can hack in and fix your credit score and shit. Any kid who loves science is generally a little more behaved then the average mullet-bearing crotch fruit. And if they aren't, well, I am bigger than them. Heck I bet these kids organize themselves while I just check in on them every now and then.
She complained that she was one of the oldest counselors there (she is thirty) and that alone made a light bulb go off in my head; a summer with young firm 20 year old girls at SPACE CAMP. What can beat that? I have a vision in my head that is a sort of a mix of the movie 'meatballs' and '2001'. Drunken raunchy fun after hours in the zero gravity simulators. Heck, the dorm rooms are mock-ups of skylab. Whoah.
That is a whole other thing: getting to run around at space camp after the kids have gone to sleep and playing with the stuff. Such as crawling in to that big gyroscope thing and getting to ride it for as long as I wanted. Playing with that little robot. Getting to pull the terminator head out of the display case (yes, they have a terminator head at space camp). I bet they have all sorts of cool stuff there.
Sigh. Some people get all the fun.
2026 Update
Eighteen years back, and Ed is already planning to raid the Skylab dorm after lights out.
Space Camp in 2008: Ed hears the word counselor and immediately smells the Jim Beam, then folds a vision of drunk zero-gravity nonsense and an unsupervised Terminator head into his future. The whole tone is deliciously ancient. Back then, online dating meant one friend on your friends list could call you ugly and you could quit a website, a decision with the permanence of a paper napkin. Now your terrible dating profile is scraped, screenshotted, fed to an algorithm, and returned to you as a targeted ad for therapy. Space Camp itself can't hide from the modern world either: today there are probably waivers for the waivers, an astronaut ice cream upsell at the gift shop, and a QR code bolted to that gyroscope. As for the kids, in 2008 he imagined self-organizing science prodigies or Walmart candy screamers. In 2026 they are filming you on tablets while their parents livestream the field trip. I miss when a grown man could just say he was bigger than children and move on. Now we have background checks and laminated safety vests. Progress tastes like gray laminate flooring.
“2008 Ed, you quit Match.com because one friends-list comment called you ugly, yet you were ready to hand kids cigars and Jim Beam and call them as fun as the next guy, so what exactly was your risk-assessment model?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you got me there. Risk assessment? I don't have one. I operate on a sort of gut-level system of cowardice and bad decisions. The Match.com thing was pure vanity, I guess. Some random comment from Froggy Tattoo and I folded like a cheap tent in a hurricane. I mean, sure, she was blunt, but she wasn't wrong. I've seen my reflection. But kids? Kids don't care what you look like, they just care if you've got snacks or fireworks. And giving them cigars and Jim Beam was a joke, mostly. Lord, I hope that was a joke. I'd never actually corrupt a kid, I'd just drink the Jim Beam myself while they played with the robot. So the model is: public rejection stings, but chaotic unsupervised space camp antics are worth the risk. Plus those twenty-year-old counselors might be too busy to notice my face.
