Rumble at the Robot

t the Robot

  by Joanna Lesher

  Copyright 2014 Joanna Lesher

  Legend had it that the robot was a reject. The administration of some nearby elementary school had decided it was too dangerous for their little darlings, covered as it was in rust and sharp edges and a weird sticky substance no one was ever able to identify. The robot was like an old dog that was no longer any fun to play with and just sulked around the house, wallowing in decrepitude and stinking up the place. It had to go.

  So the administrators disassembled it and loaded it on a truck bound for Camp Deerfield. They probably tried to comfort the robot, presenting this move as a lateral transfer rather than a demotion, but the robot knew what was up. It was being put out to pasture. It resented the fact that these people, with their shit-eating grins, didn’t even have the decency to level with it. As it was carted away, it narrowed its rust-ringed eyes and glared. Twenty years of loyal service, and this was the thanks it got. What a world.

  When I met the robot in August of 1996, it was the centerpiece of a tiny little playground on a hill, surrounded by other rejects from other playgrounds from other elementary schools. By then, what little pride it had possessed had been scoured away by the ravages of time. It stood there, sagging in resign, no longer able to feel anything but the constant ache of obsolescence. It smelled like piss.

  “That’s ‘cause kids always pee in its head,” my friend Emily offered when I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

  Her family had been coming to Camp Deerfield longer than anyone else’s, so she felt qualified to give a history of the place. She didn’t know why peeing in the robot’s head had become a camp tradition. All she knew was that it was pointless to try to play up on the third story. There was always piss up there. Always.

  So we claimed the second story instead. It was the robot’s torso. It was larger than the other levels and included two metal slides. The slides provided quick passage down to the ground level, which was important because we often needed to make a quick getaway. We had plenty of enemies at Camp Deerfield. There were rival gangs to contend with.

  Our gang, the Happy Homies, had five members, seven if you count our little brothers. Emily was the old pro. Katie was the comedian. Kristen was the oldest. I was the fighter. My little sister was the one with the speech impediment who couldn’t say the name “Arthur” without being taunted by yours truly. “Aw-fur!” I’d shriek, dancing around in a cruel display of mirth. “Aw- fur! Aw-fur!”

  Our chief rival was Hanson’s Gang, a group of middle-schoolers so clueless that they didn’t even know they were in a gang until we told them. They were led by a lanky, petulant boy who, with his long hair and wife beater, bore a striking resemblance to Zack from the boy group Hanson. He and his cronies shuffled aimlessly around the grounds, acting like Camp Deerfield wasn’t good enough for them. They looked down on us Homies, with our dirty bare feet and tendency to squeal. If there was any single faction at camp that needed a lesson in keeping it real, it was Hanson’s Gang.

  “Rumble at the robot at noon, Hanson,” we hissed whenever they walked by. “Rumble at the robot at noon.” Then we’d run to the robot and wait for them to show up. They never did. After they had stood us up half a dozen times, we started to doubt their dedication to the Camp Deerfield life style. What part of rumble at the robot didn’t they understand? Didn’t they grasp the severity of the situation? Didn’t they care that their reputation was on the line? That their street cred would be irreparably damaged if they failed to participate in the sacred right of the rumble?

  Clearly, we needed to turn the screw a bit more. One night at the dance, we convinced the DJ to play “MMMBop,” the hit single by Hanson the musical group. The song was well out-of-fashion at this point, and when the opening chords sailed through the speakers they triggered a mass exodus of campers from the dance floor. We managed to track down Hanson’s Gang near the snack bar.

  “Rumble at the robot at noon, Hanson,” we whispered. “Rumble at the robot at noon.”

  Eventually, Hanson and his friends ended up on the playground while the Homies were holding court in the robot’s chest. We chose to believe that this was not a coincidence and began taunting them from our second story stronghold.

  “You guys are total homos,” Hanson drawled. He refused to even look at us.

  “You guys are penises!” Katie shot back.

  She hurled one of Kristen’s sandals at them. Without a word, Hanson calmly picked up the sandal, walked across the road, and threw it in a pond. This was tantamount to a declaration of war. My comrades and I erupted into a fury, cussing and making threats on Hanson’s life.

  “You stupid, shitty pile of shit!” I shouted. “What the hell was that shit? You’re in deep shit now!”

  Hanson motioned to his posse and they left. We had to go home the next morning, so there was no time for retaliation. We would have to leave it to the following year. Then we would have retribution, as surely as the donut man never had any custard donuts by the time he got to our side of camp.

  But the next year, everything was different. Hanson had grown six inches and gotten a hair cut. He no longer resembled Zack Hanson. Now he looked more like Carson Daly from Total Request Live. We couldn’t even bring ourselves to call him Hanson anymore. We started using his real name: Adam.

  Once Hanson was no longer Hanson, there was no joy in harassing him. We had to find another target for our gang rage. Fortunately, it didn’t take long. On the second night of camp, we managed to enter into an altercation with a boy named Angelo. He was our age and wore skater clothing and an earring. He didn’t have a gang, per se, but he did have a gaggle of third-grade girls that followed him around, and that was close enough.

  Once the argument started, it became clear that I was going to be the main combatant, probably because I was the most bellicose of the Homies. Angelo called me a bitch. I called him ugly and told him to get a nose job. Angelo insinuated that I was afraid of him. I told him I wasn’t afraid of she-males. All the while, I was basking in the glow of my friends’ admiration. It was my finest hour.

  At school, I was about as low on the social totem pole as a person could possibly get. My family was working class. I had divorced parents. I wore weird thrift store clothes instead of fitted T-shirts from the Limited Too. Whenever I tried to defend myself against the relentless string of taunts and homophobic accusations, I ended up saying something really pathetic and unconvincing – something like, “Leave me alone, guys. Come on, guys, just leave me alone. Guys! Leave me alone, I said. Jeez, you guys…”

  But now I was on fire. Angelo could barely keep up with my dizzying display of verbal alacrity. I was eviscerating him with each flick of my razor-sharp tongue. He felt like an idiot. I could see it in his eyes. It was intoxicating. By the time the argument ended, I was so high I didn’t even know where I was anymore. My fellow Homies led me back to my tent, singing my praises the whole way.

  Later that night, Katie and I were walking to the bathroom when Angelo and a friend accosted us on bicycles. Angelo tried to regain some of his stolen honor, but his efforts were in vain. Katie and I repeatedly called him “jackass” until he was forced to pedal away in disgrace.

  We had several more tussles with Angelo after that. During one memorable incident, Emily’s younger brother began groping Angelo’s backside in the middle of a heated exchange.

  Angelo whirled around and asked, “Why are you touching my butt?”

  “Because it’s big!” Emily’s brother replied, and the Homies dissolved into helpless laughter. Angelo was forced to make another ignominious retreat.

  At the end of that summer, I felt more a
live than at any other point in my twelve years of existence. My friends were calling me the “Queen of Comebacks,” and we were already making plans for humiliating Angelo next year. Camp Deerfield, I thought, was the greatest camp on Earth. And I reveled in the knowledge that I owned the place.

  The next year, however, things changed again. My friends were becoming boy crazy, and suddenly they didn’t want to harass people like Hanson and Angelo. They wanted to date them. To them, Camp Deerfield was now nothing more than a place to troll for cute guys. I was horrified. I still hated boys, and I viewed my friends’ shift in outlook as a grand betrayal. I can’t say they were actually sleeping with the enemy, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  I started to feel like an outsider. I didn’t even recognize camp anymore. Where were the club mottos, the late-night altercations, the battle for dominance over Deerfield and all its denizens? Where were the rumbles? Puberty was stripping away what we had won with grit and street smarts, and I didn’t like it. There was no premium placed on good comebacks anymore. Now it was all about one’s ability to attract pimply-faced adolescent males.

  The last time I went to Camp Deerfield was in eighth grade. My best friend Molly was moving in a week, so my dad brought her up to camp as a surprise. I took her on a guided tour of the premises, regaling her with tales of the Homies’ former glory. At the end of the tour, I took her to see the robot.

  “Kids always pee in its head,” I told her, but when we poked our heads up into the third story, there was nothing. No puddle. No stench. I felt strangely empty inside as we descended the ladder back down into the robot’s chest. If kids had stopped peeing in the robot’s head, then it just wasn’t Camp Deerfield anymore. The salad days were over. The Comeback Queen had become every bit as obsolete as the rusty robot. I sighed and knelt down to sit in one of the slides.

  And sat directly in a huge puddle of piss.