mandatory fun and less mandatory fun

sex, drugs, nerds

In my unemployment I’ve been reading a great deal more than perhaps I ever have before, and that means exhausting my usual outlets – and yes, it’s true, I have begun perusing Slate. Which is how I came across this article by culture editor Meghan O’Rourke, and laughed for at least fourteen minutes.

Ms. O’Rourke attended the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) summer program in 1988, and writes about her good, clean fun (minus the making out during Mandatory Fun! scandalous!) at “nerd camp,” where she still remembers feeling “the sense of relief at finally being in a place where people felt, in some sense, normal. It was a place where kids could be cool without having to downplay their interests.”

Okay, Meghan, I’ll grant you that one. And I also agree on the intellectual-growth points: I can say with a fair bit of confidence that CTY is what made me want to become a writer.

But here is where our memories diverge a bit (or perhaps just our divulgence of the juicy details). I attended CTY about ten years later, and while I, too, remember “the sense of relief,” I also remember the 14-year-olds ditching Mandatory Fun, getting drunk, dealing ecstacy, having sex in the bathrooms and being shamelessly courted by their residential advisors.

Meghan writes, “Each [dance] concluded with either "Sympathy for the Devil," "Ana Ng," or "American Pie," at the end of which students chanted "Die! Die! Die! Die! Live! Live! Live! Live! Sex! Sex! Sex! Sex! More! More! More! More!" Delighted, we would go home invigorated and exhausted—a kind of clean high.”

C’mon, Meghan. That’s just what you wanted them to think.