When I was in my early teens, I remember going hiking with a group during a summer camp.

There were probably 15 of us or so piling into a van while one of the camp leaders was trying to get all of it strategically in,

as if he were playing a game of Tetris.

Looking to fill the last seat of a row, he looked at me and said, oh, strategically in, as if he were playing a game of Tetris.

Looking to fill the last seat of a row, he looked at me and said,

Oh, mercy, you're far too tubby for that seat.

Start the next row, to which chuckles fill the air.

I moved on back, pretending to laugh alone.

It was an off-handed comment, said without a second's thought, as he quickly pointed to the next camper where they should sit.

Thirty years later, the memory comes back occasionally.

Probably every time I see a summer camp van with tired, sweaty kids, packed like sardines

is when it comes to mind.

I bet they're going rope climbing in the desert, I say. But true told, I spent my youth on the piano bench, not on the

courts. I was way more into Beethoven than basketball. Sports just weren't really my thing.

Getting back to the summer camp, that day, that one day of the entire week, was literally the

only day I ever saw that camp leader. I never saw him again, and obviously haven't since.

His words, though, man, his words.

For years, his words grew like a four-seasoned garden in my mind.

They were the seeds, in my reliving the moment each day, was the fertilizer.

The interesting thing, though, in my carrying this memory,

those ten seconds of how many ever years ago this was,

the point is, I'm the only one that's been reliving it.

...