Distress Signals from the Ivory Tower

A collection of handlettered FOB and FOB-adjacent lyrics (”I Don’t Care”, “Uma Thurman”, “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes”, “Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over”, “Saturday”, “Run Dry”.)

Last summer, he was working with one of the younger units comprised of ten year old boys. They had spent the night camping on another beach and were just readying themselves to depart. “Make sure you have all your things!” called my friend. “Don’t leave anything behind!”

One small boy came up, dragging a massive tangle of decomposing seaweed behind him. “But… what about me boy?” he asked, lip trembling.

“…what is ‘me boy’?”

The child held up the stinking wad of bull kelp. “This is him. This is Me Boy.”

“Me Boy is not coming back with us,” said his counselor. “You’re going to leave Me Boy behind on the beach where he belongs.”

The campers loudly mourned the loss of Me Boy. They insisted on giving him a Viking burial at sea, which just consisted of pushing him solemnly off the back of the rowboat into the water and watching him drift away in the surf.

That was only the beginning. Me Boy would be back.

The campers, in true camp fashion, possessed some kind of cultic hive-mind and a predisposition for bizarre memes. Me Boy would not be forgotten. They started telling each other stories about Me Boy and how he would one day rise again. There were warring factions with contradicting dogmas about Me Boy. Only when the gardener allowed them to take home a zucchini she had harvested did they find their god, born anew.

Me Boy, The Zucchini That Was A God, became the whole unit’s mascot. The kids would bicker over who got to carry him. They built nests and carriers for Me Boy and brought him to different activities, fiercely defending him from those that would do him harm. One child appointed himself the Voice of Me Boy and would translate the zucchini’s divine wishes into human speech.

It got out of hand. Me Boy had become a distraction, a fixation, a violent controversy. Something had to be done.

My friend, their counselor, took it upon himself to kill Me Boy. The children wailed in despair as he chopped their God into refreshing slices. With this sudden turn of fortune, followers of Me Boy turned to theophagy. “We must eat him to preserve his power!” they cried. Boys who would otherwise never have touched a vegetable ate greedily of this sacrament, eager to let Me Boy live on within them.

For a time, it seemed that peace and order had been restored, and the religion had already faded into its silver age. But only for a time.

So I was facilitating an all-week teambuilding program for this rag-tag group of scouts, most of which had never met before, and at the start of their week they had to come up with a team name and yell. They spoke amongst each other for about 30 seconds before one kid shouts above the chatter, “USSR II, STARVATION BOOGALOO!” The response was unanimous agreement. As for the team yell, it came as quickly as the name did. “WE WANT BREAD! We WANT BREAD! WE WANT BREAD!”

Their enthusiasm for their joint identity was unrivaled by any other group I have ever seen at camp. They worked together like they had all known each other for years and they would hang out with each other during camp hours outside of our allotted team-building time each morning. Their teamwork was only matched by their desire for the fictional bread that we would use as a goal or reward for the team-developing games we played.

Pretty soon, though, the groups identity started to become more of an obsession.

On the week’s third day, before class, we could hear them from the top of the ridge. Everyone could hear them marching in unison, shouting their team yell repeatedly at the tops of their lungs- “WE WANT BREAD! WE WANT BREAD! WE WANT BEAD!” The only thing able to stop them before they did this all the way to class was a furious Ranch director accosting them for startling all of the horses.

The eerie levels escalated when, after one of our more intense team-building games, they all rose from the benches, unprompted, and did this-

I’m glad I was quick enough to get a good video of it.

Take note of the boy at the center of the ring- he called himself Pelican (each team member gets to pick their “real name” at the beginning of the week.) Pelican became the group’s messiah, and a kid that called himself Dad was his prophet.

On the 4th day out of 5, Pelican did not show up to class, much to the distress of the rest of USSR II. However, they united in his absence and excelled at the challenges we made for them regardless. Later that day, I learned that Pelican had started preaching to his troop about how their adult leaders were tyrannical and was unfortunately sent home from camp early.

On day 5, Dad was also missing from class, for apparently he had taken Pelican’s gospel to heart, directly disobeyed his troops adult leaders, and was consequentially sent home.

Allthough they were down two teammates, the team succeeded anyway, completing the high-ropes course with grace.

At the end of class, we staff members shouted their team name in unison, and they responded with their now infamous team yell one last time before they all left camp at the end of the day.

On the 6th day of that camp week, the cleanup day, we walked down the ridge to our area’s shelter and took in the distinct lack of loud campers with glee. I unlocked the shelters closet to take inventory when I noticed a very large black trash bag that was very unfamiliar and very full of something. Considering the shelter had been locked since we left it the day before, there was no way anyone would have been able to get in unless they were a camp ranger or the camp director herself. We opened it apprehensively.

Inside the bag? Bread. Slices upon slices of loose bread, the whole bag weighing about 40 lbs. The only way they could have gotten bread without exiting the camp would’ve been by stealing it from the PBJ stand during meals, but the sheer quantity of it in this bag was frankly baffling.

Under it was a note written in red marker that read

Now that we are free of tyranny, we shall never starve again

-Pelican

brain: hey guess what

me: what

brain: sudden overwhelming sadness, that’s what

me:

you’re strangling her, Grim

Gregor and Marlena settled into their farmhouse with a plan to fill it with children, but nearly three decades later, it seemed that the universe had other plans. Every few years Marlena chose a new deity to bring offerings to, inevitably moving on to the next when her prayers went unanswered. She thought she had run out of temples to frequent when she noticed a small, overgrown shrine off the main road into the Holy District.

Few people ask favors of the goddess of death. They fear that the consequence will be the prevalence of death in their own lives. But the Raven Queen does not trade in souls (all souls return to her in the end). She requires service.

Marlena left her tribute at the shrine, whispered a prayer, and returned home. That night she had a dream of a woman in black robes, the skull of a raven in place of her head, and a voice commanding but gentle.

Many forget, it is the ebb and flow of life with which I concern myself. You will have a son, but he will devote himself to me when he is grown. This is my first condition.

My second is this: You must bring him to my shrine and that is where you will name him.

I do love babies. No one ever lets me see their babies.

When Marlena woke, she told her husband, who was skeptical, at best. But nine months later, they had a son, and they took him to the shrine and named him Barry.

Growing up in the Bluejeans household, there was a black feather which hung over the doorway in the kitchen. A neighbor child once asked what it was for.

CONTENT WARNINGS - BLOOD / VIOLENCE / DEATH