Back in my day camp summers, the counselors killed time by teaching us many bizarre games. For some reason, I always had more fun observing other kids’ behavior and pondering strategy than actually playing. There was Broken Telephone, where a sentence would go in tame and come out the other end as a nonsensical declarative about cheese dishwashers. You could usually tell who was really screwing up the message, because the person receiving the message would laugh. Then there was Murder Wink, where we all sat in a circle and one “murderer” would kill silently by winking at people. Since the dead couldn’t talk, bystanders would race against time to figure out who the murderer was before getting the dreaded wink. I noticed that murderers often made the mistake of killing too many people too quickly. I also noticed that death was easily averted by pretending not to see the wink. Just don’t go fingering the murderer too soon after that, because he or she will finger you back for cheating.
My favorite game was Atom, which must have been a local phenomenon because I haven’t been able to find any mention of it online. It was a math-related game that involved forming groups of a specific number. For instance, on the call of “Atom 4”, kids had to form groups of four. After a few seconds, anybody left without a group of exactly four was called out and eliminated by the leader of the game. And then another atom number would be called, like “Atom 2” or “Atom 7”. It was mildly amusing when a kid would dash into a group only to be told to scram, because they already had the magic number of people, and the odd kid’s presence would mean elimination for all of them. Kind of harsh, but far less so than the more pervasive game of dodgeball. I quickly learned to avoid the most common mistake—not counting yourself in the group. And that was all there was to it.
It all felt very one-dimensional on my first time playing. And then they called, “Atom 1”. This meant that we had to stand alone. Anybody who so much as tried to find a group was eliminated. So, many kids were eliminated. This effect left me baffled. It was the one time in my childhood when it was okay, even normal, to be alone. And I wanted so badly to tell my parents and their stupid self-help parenting books that I was normal and okay. I found comfort in those few seconds, and in their memory, in which I was free from peer pressure and judgment. I never forgot about “Atom 1”, and into my adolescence it became a sort of philosophy of mine.
Kids ask a lot of questions. “What’s wrong with you?” “Why do you do that?” “Why are you so quiet?” After that summer, I always had an answer. It was more of an answer for myself than for anybody asking. Atom 1.
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