Mike and Mandy

A bit of fiction about a young man whose depression is cured by a tooth brush.

It is September.  The high-pitched enthusiastic voices of summer have gone home with parents, and summer camp has grown silent.   Mike, a college student and one of the counselors is charged with closing down the youth camp.  He is out to review what must be done while laboring alone at this remote facility.

He had just stepped out of the camp office and into the adjoining workshop.  Holding a saw blade to his wrist he considers how simple it would be to uncomplicate his life.  Simple, but quite messy and, would leave behind a major clean-up.”

Mike has long been depressed over his view of the future.  He sees himself graduating into a merciless and godless world fueled by greed and the race to accumulate money.  As an accounting student and aspiring CPA, he sees a future of racing to maximize revenues for himself and his customers.  Once accomplished, he will pivot to a life of protecting assets with padlocks, insurance policies, warehouses and police.  Then, having achieved wealth, his attention will focus on avoiding dread diseases, accidents, and other violent ends to arrive at a place where his assets are mined by doctors and long-term care facilities. Next comes death, when the rest of a lifetime’s accumulations are distributed to others.  Death, to Mike, is a black hole, but a preferred option to living out a pointless life.

First things, first.  It is time to review what he still has to do to close down camp.  He returns the saw to its place, leaves the workshop and begins his inspection tour.  As he crunches through the first autumn leaves accumulating on the path, it occurs to him that an improvement over the saw blade could present itself along the way.

His first stop is the rifle range.  “Well, well” thinks Mike, “I could eat the barrel of a 22 rifle.  Use my toe on the trigger. Could do it outside which would leave less of a mess.  Although, 22 is pretty small caliber.  If I don’t place the shot just right, I could survive as a vegetable.  No gain there.”   

The swimming beach is next on his route, and has Mike thinking again. “The water is pretty shallow, but I could take a canoe out to the diving platform.  Ten feet of water out there.  I could step off holding a rock to take me to the bottom, and if I change my mind, I can just drop the rock.  But what would be the point of changing my mind? A non-messy option, but still…

Another ten minutes on the path takes him to Lookout Point.  Here the cliff edge is ten paces from the fire pit, offering another option.  “An eleventh step is all it would take and, I couldn’t change my mind on the way down to those sharp boulders below. More certain than the diving platform.”

Returning to the campground campus, he stops at the camp kitchen for a snack, and comes up with another option.  “I could turn off the pilot light on the gas stove, then just sit here and doze off.  Clean, painless, fairly quick.  Introducing a match would add drama and attract a crowd, so probably wouldn’t add that.”

During his contemplations a bicycle brings Mandy, another of the counselors who has stayed behind to spend a couple days relaxing before returning home.  She and Mike had an attraction for one another and she brings with her a gift bag for Mike.  They talk about the areas Mike needs to close down.

Mandy recalled fondly her hours at the rifle range where she used a spotting scope to tell kids where their shots were hitting the targets. She liked time at the lake teaching swimming and showing how to bait a hook. Some of the craft projects coming out of the workshop were pretty primitive, but the meals and snacks enjoyed out of the camp kitchen were always pretty good. What she remembered most were the facial expressions and body language revealing what was going on inside all those youthful heads. Those who were not so skilled or happy with one activity turned out to be pretty good at something else.  To Mandy, it was a good summer, and not quite over yet.

“So, tell me”, Mandy, “what are your favorite memories you will be taking home from this summer?”

“I think standing at lookout point in the midst of God’s creation, seeing the rising moon and, feeling the peace and intimacy of the night coming on.  A second favorite, like the first, was sitting over the aroma of a morning coffee in the camp kitchen full of hope for the day ahead. And the memory making isn’t over yet.”

“Listening to you talk” respond’s Mike, “makes me think I should listen to you more often. I’ve been feeling kind of low lately, and since you stopped by, the world looks a lot brighter.  By the way, what’s in the gift bag.”

“It’s not much really, just some fresh ground Italian roast coffee -- and my tooth brush.”

“Perhaps” thinks Mike, “there is a God after all”.