Page 179 - WhyAsInY

a Bit of DasH BetWeen tHe Kee anD tHe WaH
did nothing otherwise to dispel his reputation. On the other hand, he did have his two front teeth.
For the privilege of being a camper-waiter, I would be entitled to receive my share of the tips that the co-ops received and pooled, and— oh, by the way—my parents would have to pay a fee to the camp (approximately one-half of the normal camper tuition) so that I could work there. I guess that serfdom is about the closest analogy that I can find for the system that, in retrospect (please be kind to me here), did co-opt me.
To be truthful, I really liked to wait on the camper tables. Meals were served on platters, “family style,” which made being a waiter eas- ier. In addition, there were professional busboys (four African American high school football players whose coach was a group leader), which made things easier still, but I also did a fair amount of busing myself. I learned many valuable skills as a waiter: how to apply critical-path theory to the meal; how to triage when necessary; how to deal with “live” (untouched) food (it must be brought back to the kitchen); how to “kill” live food (so that it wouldn’t have to go back to the kitchen); how to carry a full tray with one hand and move it from the left side of my head to the right side of my head when someone was walking toward me or something suddenly appeared on my left; how to set up and clean up quickly; and how to be friendly and keep my cool. (As has been the case with many things in my life, I felt a need to perfect my waiting skills; I treated waiting on tables as an art form, something that I was intent on learning to perform well—in fact, to perform it with a bit of flair.)
It was the last of that list that presented the first and greatest test that waiting on the campers had in store for me. On the very first night that I ever waited tables, the excitement of the bus trip up to camp must have overcome one of the campers in Bunk 10. Just as I was bringing dessert to the table, one of the kids turned white and proceeded to cough and then to deposit his entire previously semi-digested meal on the table in front of him, not exactly family-style. The only reaction of the senior of the two counselors at the table was to get all of the kids up
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