Being the good Southern Baptist that I am, I have always felt a natural fit for the fire and brimstone. It is heaven that I have a much harder time recognizing.
I’d already been to hell twice in my life by my 18th birthday. My first trip was near the end of high school, back when gas prices averaged a buck thirty-five and Kelly Clarkson was busy being crowned the first American Idol. These factors coupled together would eventually equal my escape from childhood: my first car on the wide open road, me inside belting ballads.
But not before I first paid one hell of a visit to American Legion Boys State in The Sticks, Tennessee. If inside my car was a place I could reinvent myself, then Boys State was the place where I could try just being ‘one of the guys’. And that’s all I secretly wanted for my sixteen-year-old wretched self.
Boys State is a one-week overnight camp for young men in high school. Young… men – verbal emphasis on the men with a touch of sarcasm as if it was meant to persuade us into acting like adults for one week of our lives. The camp had been sold to me as a respectable opportunity to learn about the state government, and how to be a good citizen of our most worshipped nation. As far as I had learned, Uncle Sam was the second Son of God, so this rite of passage was as required as all those Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings spent at church. Being the eager-to-please not unintelligent, not overly intelligent nerd that I was, I read this as: This needs to be on my activities list for college acceptance. At the time I wasn’t aware an activities list is not the best reason to sign up for an overnight camp that otherwise makes one’s body excessively sweaty when thinking about it. Especially when applying to a state college that roughly ninety-eight percent of applicants get into anyways.
It’s not at all necessary, but I was already well on my way to developing childhood symptoms of impressivitis. The disease that would end up riddling my brain with an unquenchable desire to excel at everything or at least remain busy enough to appear impressive to the outside world. Just in case someone, anyone, a friend or stranger, were to stop me on the street and ask how I was doing, and I would need to sound so winded from having already accomplished so much that they would have no option except to be captivated by me. I would forgo my imagination in search of approval. Though this was prior to my self-diagnosis, and still further ahead of when I began to realize that real friends aren’t made by trying to impress them. Real friends come while being dragged through mud, and there they are, waiting with towels.
Frankly I don’t remember how I was one of three or four boys selected from my high school for camp. Either I have blocked from my memory paying off one of my teachers, or something worse: they chose me. Most likely it had something to do with me being a person who had never said no before in his life, or the fact that I was the first one to walk into the principal’s office on draft day, or even more likely they could just smell the fear on me. As children we always forgot deodorant, but somehow we always managed to remember gallons of Abercrombie Fierce, trying not to reveal to other people how much we stunk.
Deep down I have no doubt that this sleepaway camp for boys who cared about their resumes was founded upon good intentions. Ours was an era before bullies and gays and cellphones were discussed openly, much less accepted as the norm. So sticking hundreds of high school junior boys into one college dorm and asking them to study the government seemed like a realistic expectation to me. But being the first week of summer break, the hormones pumping through our veins, like Capri Suns inside a five year old, had much different intentions.
It was May 2002, and I pulled up at Tennessee Tech, a university that to this day I believe is probably stained by the stench of teenage boy armpits. I had reached the campus a day late due to my sister’s graduation which had fallen on registration day. Looking back, this conflict of event interests should have been appeared as multiple red flags waving in a category five hurricane, like God was dangling a savory excuse in front of my parched nostrils and asking if I was hungry for a way out. I was.
But I was much hungrier for acceptance. I didn’t do overnight trips with other guys. Still, here I was, surfing in a tropical storm.
We all have different reasons for why we do what we do, especially as kids. Sometimes these reasons make it into our conscious, but I have a feeling that most of the times, those reasons don’t. We have few facts and more plentiful impulses, we have agile little boney bodies, but we’re still not sure how to work them in our youth. We are as weird as seahorses. We do things because we feel that we’ll get something out of it for ourselves. Maybe my reason for attending Boys State was because I sincerely was eager to learn more about the way the government works. Or because I wanted to impress someone by having been invited, or because I wanted to ensure college acceptance. Or because I wanted to take a chance at making new guy friends, which I had always been graceless at. I didn’t try out for the basketball team because I thought that they’d sprinkle magic dunking powder on me, I tried out because I wanted to be friends with the guys who played basketball. Yet somehow the magic powder seemed more realistic.
Eventually this will be funny even to me.
My driver’s side door hadn’t stopped creaking before I noticed an eerie silence on campus. It whispered like the moment just before you turn around and see an axe murderer in the backseat, more than it spoke of any type of calm. The boys were all busy inside the dorms, sizing up their fellow county citizens to which they’d been gerrymandered. And there I was, wobbling in like a newly born baby deer in a Dodge Ram’s headlights, my knobby knees and fear were hardly a secret.
Now I’ve never been to Jones County, Tennessee. In fact, I don’t think there even is a Jones County, Tennessee. But this was to be my home for the week, my faux residence to which I’d been assigned citizenship. And all these fellow smelly and sticky teens gathered around were my would-be farm neighbors. Certainly Jones County was meant to be a rural county as our boys didn’t look too dangerously formidable or clique-y. They looked like they’d signed up after having been promised a buffet and shooting range. This was very good news for me. Should the need arise, I’d distract them with some cornbread and a decoy. That was my plan until the Jones county sheriff arrived a few minutes later and informed me that no, my name was, in fact, not listed with a Jones County residence. It was the first time I’d ever been kicked out of anywhere, yet it felt less rebellious than I’d hoped.
My new county was less of a county and more of a rich surburbia. Navy polos, clean shaven faces, enough khaki to fill every JCPenney catalogue, sunglasses with straps just in case a strong gust of wind should come during a make-believe game of golf, the undertones of a fraternity in training. I’m fairly sure they had established a homeowners’ association by the time I’d arrived and held the first meeting to discuss how to keep our county neighbors from bringing our property values down. Surburbia’s Mean Boys weren’t intentionally so, but their interests were so far removed from my own that the isolation felt mean enough.
Isolation enveloped in having to make your bed military style, folding the corners under for inspection just waiting for the quarter to bounce. Many smart people have said that organization contributes to happiness, a clean space, a clear mind. My disorganization might explain why I was so unhappy at times. The isolation and the beds followed by eating stale breakfast with a bunch of dudes talking about girls, or more so talking about girl parts. These conversations were rapidly changing my desire to have close guy friends as I cared very little about such talk. The isolation and the beds and the breakfast chased by marching in the summer heat. Like miniature armies, we marched, constantly on guard to fight invisible enemies. Because that’s what good little boys were supposed to do.
Day four felt like forty, and given any moment to breathe, I’d sink down into my vinyl twin mattress and tell myself that everything was going to be okay. “Everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay.” Like fine wine, the acquired taste of hope eventually gets you drunk into believing that everything is, in fact, okay. But a few days’ worth of chants isn’t enough to convince even the most naïve of sixteen year olds that hope is real. So, I prayed for God to shorten the days that I might have fewer hours here. I’m not sure if I meant at camp or in general, and I’m not sure I cared which He chose at that point.
When that did not work, the prayers still kept me busy. They numbed my mind as I lined up for marching drills. I’m not quite sure where we were marching to, or if they were just trying their best to tire us out. Either way, only one scheme existed for evading the all-day-marching, and that route was by winning the Governors’ race, or by being friends with the Governor. I was learning more about the inner-workings of politics than I thought. But considering how well my making friends was going, I didn’t waste my time with running for Governor. To add to the grief, I wasn’t friends with anyone running, so I gave up all hope for escaping the daily marches. I conceded to being one of the army, quarantined into the masses for eternity.
For these and many other reasons, I nearly had an early onset heart attack while standing in formation one dawn. This particular morning was the announcement of the new Governor’s Cabinet, those who would so luckily escape the summer inferno’s deadly grip. I tried to pry my crusty eyes open while not wishing addictions and diseases upon each of one the names that came over the loud speaker. At least not fatal disorders.
Commissioner of Correction - Joseph Cole
Commissioner of Economic Development - Daniel Culbreath
Commissioner of Education - Elijah Harrington
Commissioner of Finance - Brent Baxley
Commissioner of Health - James Morton
Wait.
What.
Morton? …James?
I would have tried raising my hand, but that would have thrown off our not so at ease formation. I knew I had heard Morton, but I had not heard Ben. Instead, I thought I heard my legal first name, James. Please dear God don’t tell me there’s someone else named James Morton here. Immediately I placed all of my faith into this crack of light shining down into the dungeon that was high school. Please dear God let that be me. I kept repeating it like a 38-year-old going on a third date, please let this be the one… If not, I’m giving up.
Come to find out, a fellow classmate from my high school had been appointed to the Cabinet after his newfound friend had been elected Governor. The Governor, in turn, didn’t know enough sixteen year olds to fill his Cabinet so he asked for my friend’s help in filling the vacant positions. I had been appointed the Commissioner of Health.
I was terribly elated, and I nearly cried. And if I had cried, I probably wouldn’t confess to it in writing. In my somewhat of an emotional breakdown, I profusely thanked the Governor and my high school friend and dedicated the rest of my life to them. Politics had become my strong suit. And in the midst of my gratitude, I dramatically overshared.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. I thought that I was going to have to march out on that hot pavement for the rest of eternity. I hate it, I hate marching, I hate it all.”
As soon as the words left my lips, I knew what I had done. I had opened myself up to humiliation and criticism for showing such weakness, what I had tried so hard not to do all week long. Unknown faces turned towards me, and a voice came from the back. It spoke neither softly nor loudly, but confidently with the two most powerful words that I have ever heard...
“Me too,” the voice said, and I felt a hand on my shoulder.