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MY MOTHER'S GUILTY PLEASURE

I was sent to fat camp.

There, I said it. I doubt there’s a way to put it any more bluntly. My mother—bless her heart—sent her underweight eight-year-old daughter to a fat camp.

It was advertised in the newspaper as “Exercise Camp: A Great Way to Keep Your Child Active Over the Summer!” I’m not entirely sure when I realized that it was more than that. It was as if I had woken up one morning with memories I had long forgotten and the realization that Exercise Camp had some negative connotations that I wasn’t aware of in 2011.

I brought it up for the first time during my senior year of high school. We were in the car driving God-knows-where. I was in the very back seat of my aunt’s white minivan, my uncle, mother, and two cousins crammed into the remaining passenger seats. I remember that both sides of the road were thickly lined with trees, their leaves having recently turned to their autumn shades of yellow, orange, and red. The radio was filled with static, an echoing buzz briefly interrupting whatever music my aunt had picked out for us to listen to.

My mom was pressed against the window, talking about how pretty the leaves were. She has always been obsessed with going on road trips in the fall, desperate to just ride and enjoy the scenery. She had once commented about how she loved the fact that I was always noticing how pretty the sky was. Every car ride from my childhood where I could see the sky, I always had something to say along the lines of, “Look at the clouds!” I had picked up the habit from my mom.

My eyes were not focused on the sky that day, however. I was probably watching my aunt drive. She never failed to have her arm stick-straight on the steering wheel, her elbow and shoulder locked into place, arm parallel with her lap. My mother was aware that her sister was not the best driver, and the beautiful autumn scenery outside was not enough to prevent her from holding the “oh shit” handle.

Through the static of the radio, I could faintly hear a song playing that brought back fierce memories that I had stored away nine years prior: “I Gotta Feeling” by The Black Eyed Peas.

I sat there in concentrated silence, watching my aunt take a sketchy turn on the road with her stiff arm as The Black Eyed Peas fought to be heard through the static. Perhaps it was because I had not thought about Exercise Camp for nine years that I came to an almost absurd conclusion, but I couldn’t be sure. I opened my mouth. Closed it. I mulled the words over on my tongue. Finally, “I think I went to Fat Camp.”

My mother whipped her head around. She peeled her eyes away from the leaves to fix me with a look that made me second-guess my deduction. “No, you did not,” she told me, accusation thick in her voice.

My uncle, who had been silent for most of the ride, turned around in his seat. Amusement was painted all over his face.

“Exercise Camp,” I told the group as if that was a clarification enough.

Laughter erupted throughout the car. It seemed that they had not forgotten about me being sent off during the summer of 2011.

“It wasn’t a fat camp,” my mom tried to defend herself, though now she was laughing. “The newspaper ad said nothing about it being a fat camp.”

“They weighed us!”

We were all giggling at the idea. My aunt’s driving got a little more reckless with the added distraction.

“Poor little Merle,” my uncle feigned. “All skin and bones and having to start her weight loss journey at forty pounds.”

I was one of those kids that you had to praise anytime they finished eating. My cousins and I have vivid memories of my mom bragging to my aunt that I, at the age of eight, had finished half of a jelly sandwich (with the crust cut off, of course) and all of my chocolate pudding cup. I took a pill every night before bed to make up for the sustenance that I was definitely not getting. We liked to joke that when my younger cousin was born—who was a whopping nine pounds and three ounces—she weighed the same as I did when I was four.

It's funny to think back now, that when my mom alerted my aunt that I had finished my lunch—that was hardly even considered a meal—she would turn and congratulate me, my chest swollen with pride. Meanwhile, my two cousins would watch the exchange perplexed that finishing a pudding cup could even be dubbed a victory.

“What made you even think about Exercise Camp?” my cousin asked, still confused on how the topic had even been brought up.

“The Black Eyed Peas,” I responded, gesturing to the radio. “It’s the only thing they played while we worked out.”

From the few memories that I still have from Exercise Camp, The Black Eyed Peas are in all of them. I don’t know what it is about “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling,” but I swear it was the only thing that was played over the loudspeakers.

We worked out in rotations. Each kid was assigned a spot in the room where we would do various forms of cardio. Jumping rope, hula-hooping, jumping-jacks, jogging in place, lungeing over a mat, sprinting across the room, you name it. When the song ended, we would rotate around the room so for the entirety of the next song we were doing a different workout.

In my eight-year-old mind, my two closest friends (also known as the only people I remember) were Sarah and Sarah. They were not both named Sarah—and it is entirely possible that neither of them was named Sarah—but Sarah is how I remember them.

During the rotation, I would have a Sarah on my left and a Sarah on my right. The younger Sarah, who had blonde curly hair and a rosy face, would complain about how she was only here because her mom forced her to be, and that she would rather die than do any more jumping jacks. Older Sarah, who seemed intent on trying to appear cooler than everyone else in the room, would respond with something snarky and mutter to me about how Blonde Sarah was so overweight. Then the song would end and the next track on The Black Eyed Peas CD would begin to play.

“Every time I would pick her up,” my mom said, still giggling, “they would tell me that Merle is so full of energy!”

“She had eaten her entire pudding cup that day,” my uncle joked.

My cousin piped up from the back seat. “I never understood why they were so proud of you for that.”

“It was a big deal,” I told her, smiling. “Don’t invalidate my experience.”

“You didn’t get it because you were six and eating like every day was Thanksgiving,” my uncle told her.

I don’t remember Exercise Camp seeming like it had the goal to help us lose weight. I’m sure I protested being dropped off every afternoon, but once I was there, I think I enjoyed it. At least, I don’t remember having a negative opinion on it at the time. The only thing that gave away their ulterior motive of getting us to lose weight, was the fact that at the end of every two-hour, Black Eyed Peas-induced workout, we would line up and stand on a scale.

“I probably should have looked into it more,” my mom said, eyes focusing back on the leaves outside. “The newspaper ad was just so enticing.”

Her comment made my aunt break into a fit of giggles. “That’s not the only thing you’ve seen in the paper that you didn’t look into enough,” she told my mom between bouts of laughter. “Remember the Single’s Dance?”

Apparently, in 1990, when my mom and aunt were 23 and 21 respectively, my mom came across a newspaper ad that was advertising a “Single’s Dance” in Downtown Columbia. They had gotten all dolled up for it and made the drive, excited to meet a nice-looking young man.

My mom was single and fresh out of college, with nothing better to do than find someone and settle down. My aunt, who I’ve heard been described as “boy-crazy” before, didn’t protest the idea either.

The dance was held in a church, which seemed like another green flag for the two sisters. Admission to get in was ten dollars (because of course, there was a price to meet your future husband) and a little old lady sat at a desk in front of the doors, collecting money.

“I remember she looked so shocked to see us,” my aunt said, still laughing. She was getting hard to understand because she was so tickled by the memory. “She was like, ‘what are you doing here?’”

“She wouldn’t take our money,” my mom recalled. “She told us to look through the door so we could see what we were getting ourselves into.”

“And there were all these wrinkled old men!”

From their retelling of the story, I imagine a room full of people that belong in a nursing home. Sweater vests on, hair (if they had any left) combed over, white socks pulled up, and red solo cups filled with prune juice and tap water. There was probably that distinct old-person smell wafting through the room.

“I bet they were excited to see you two,” my uncle teased, making my cousins and I snicker. “They were probably like, ‘yes! Jackpot!’”

At the sight of my mom and aunt peering through the doors, looks of horror and disbelief all over their faces, the old men started elbowing their buddies and pointing over at them. The old women in the room, who were probably excited and hesitant to be back out in the dating field, felt their chances of meeting someone slipping through their arthritic fingers.

“I was mortified,” my aunt told us, still laughing like it was the funniest story in the world.

We turned down a narrow road, conversation coming back to a standstill. My mom was looking out of the window again, making small comments about the trees and how she wished there was a trail we could hike on.

When the silence continued on, my aunt said, “Do you remember when the Mormons came to our house because you answered that ad?”

This was when I realized that my mom seemed to have a problem with answering newspaper ads that she knew nothing about. None of the stories thus far had an ending like that one song about Piña Coladas (a wife and husband post and respond to a newspaper ad, respectively, and agree to meet up for a date, not realizing that they were meeting their current spouses), and I doubted that this next one was going to either.

“I really liked to get free stuff,” she defended, as if that was a good enough reason to explain why she kept answering these ads.

The ad was for a CD that was supposed to teach you how to live a happy life. Some random professor of psychology supposedly taught a lecture about it. “I wanted to live a happy life,” my mom told us, shrugging her shoulders. “So, I called the number.”

She gave them her address and a number they could reach her with, and she assumed that was that. They would deliver the CD in a couple of days and my mom, more than likely, would listen to it once and never think of it again.

A few days rolled by before she received a phone call.

“They said they were going to be bringing the CD to my house,” my mom said, “and that they wanted to listen to it with me.”

She was still living with her parents at this point, and it was the 80’s so it was less terrifying than it seems. I think it sounds like she was going to get murdered by a creepy man who chooses his victims based on who responds to his newspaper ad, but evidently that was not one of my mom’s fears when she invited him to her house.

Two men appeared in her driveway, wearing their matching white shirts. My mom answered the door with her father and the men introduced themselves as Elder John and Elder Peter, telling them that they were with the Church of Latter Day Saints.

“It’s so crazy that you have the same first name,” my grandfather said to the men.

The funny part is that he was not making a joke, he just genuinely thought that they were both named Elder.

They blinked at him, awkwardly laughed, and my mom invited them inside before it could get any more uncomfortable.

“They thought that the way to live a happy life was Mormonism,” my mom explained. “So, they wanted to listen to the CD with me so they could talk about God. After we finished it, though, they wanted to come back another day so we could talk some more. And I was freaking out.”

When Elder John and Elder Peter came over the second time to the house, my mom was at home alone. They rang the doorbell and knocked on the door, but my mom refused to answer it. She told us then, that when she didn’t answer, they circled the house and peered through all the windows to see if they could see her. My mom hid under her bed, holding her breath as if that would give away her hiding place. After a while, deciding that no one was home, they left.

“That’s absolutely terrifying,” I told my mom at the end of her story.

“And why you shouldn’t give out private information,” my aunt agreed. She fixed us with a look in the rearview mirror and firmly said, “girls” to solidify her warning. We nodded.

Thank God my mom doesn’t read the newspaper anymore, is all I could think. I can’t even begin to imagine the things she could find if the newspaper was still as popular as it was back in the day. She’s not tech savvy either, but heaven forbid the day she stumbles across an online ad that piques her interest enough to investigate it.

I still like to bring up Fat Camp every once in a while, just to give my mom a little grief. I can’t listen to The Black Eyed Peas anymore, not without thinking about running laps with Sarah and Sarah. If we walk into a store and it’s playing, I’ll elbow my mom and jokingly say, “You know what this song reminds me of?” She’ll pretend she didn’t hear me, though we both know there is no ill-will behind my words.

My mom’s experience with newspaper ads isn’t as pleasing as the lyrics from “The Piña Colada Song,” but it does make one hell of a story.