This summerour pastor and his wife, Janet, took eight of us camping. I don't know what he was thinking, but this was real camping: tents, campfires, and no showers. We “sponge bathed� as best we could and washed our hair in a river. We ate beans, franks, burnt toast and heard over and over again how pastor used to be in the Marine Corps. On top of all that, the only entertainment between Matins, Bible Study, prayer time, and Vespers, was paddling around in a canoe and swatting at mosquitoes. To make matters even worse, I showed up with a pimple under my nose bigger than Hitler's moustache. I wasn't happy to be there and this pimple seemed to know it. It was a throbbing red monster pulsing with my discontentment and anger. It looked like I was balancing a cherry tomato on my upper lip. I could barely open my mouth because of the pain. I just wanted to go home and hide in my room until the disfigurement either killed me or went away. The final straw was Lisa. She and I were the only girls. At home, she lives just down the street from me on the next block.We used to be good friends. But then she got pretty and I stayed dumpy. She is a cheerleader with immaculate clothing and hair. She looks like she stepped right out of a Britney Spears' video and into the drooling hearts of all the boys in our school. Normally, even though she is the prettiest girl around and we are no longer the chums we once were, I can tolerate her because I am smarter and I figure that is what matters. But my zit wasn't really up for it.The only good thing, I thought, was that she is exactly the kind of girl who hates camping. Her casual good looks couldn't possibly hold up without make-up and running water. I was wrong. She loved it. She looked better than ever. And I felt worse. But something happened. Lisa and I and my zit bonded. Janet is a nurse and she went with Mike to the hospital after he got stung by a bee.That left the pastor and the boys in the big tent and Lisa and me alone in the other tent. I resisted at first, but before I knew it we were giggling and carrying on about Janet's maniacal reaction to the bee sting emergency and the whole camping fiasco.There in the dark tent it was like we were back in the 5th grade, when neither one of us was either pretty or dumpy. We laughed so loud that the pastor scolded us. It was fun. But when we finally calmed down, it got strangely serious. Staring blankly at the canvas, late into the night, we whispered back and forth about
Zits in the Tent by Kathy Luder
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