Shannon M. Turner (23:45)
Somewhere along in that conversation, we start talking about his cat. The cat's name was Guinevere. And I thought that was really interesting because I was an English major and I had just that year been studying Arthurian legend. And then Tom tells me that actually Guinevere had a brother whose name was Arthur. And I said, where's Arthur? And he then proceeded to tell me. When Arthur was a kitten, he became very sick. And I held him all night long as he passed from the earth. And then he looked up at me and he drilled me with his icy blue eyes, full of pain and. And sadness. And I felt like I melted inside. Like all of my insides just dropped down into my toes as I crossed over this line from little girl crush into grown up love. Now, something else I need to tell you about with camp is that everyone called me Cricket. It's not uncommon to have a camp nickname, but I loved being called Cricket. I loved it because, well, in the rest of my life, I didn't like myself. I had come to camp from my first year in college, where I had been ruthlessly bullied by my roommate, which was not unlike when I had been ruthlessly bullied all through middle school, which was also not unlike having been ruthlessly bullied by my father my whole life. But when I came to camp, I felt strong. I felt like this whole different person. I was fun. I knew all the stories, I could lead the songs, and Cricket just fit me. It was this symbol for being this other human. But also another reason why I loved having another identity is there was another Shannon there. Every year at camp, there was Shannon. Every junior high assembly, every senior high assembly, every resurrection weekend, there was Shannon and her flute. Shannon loved to play her flute. Every skit night, every talent show. If it had been today, I would have been able to call Shannon a frenemy. But back then, I just had to grin and bear it a few weeks into the summer. Walked into the lodge on a Friday afternoon. We're all hot and sweaty. It'd been a very hard week. And there, across the way, was Tom, which made my heart flutter, of course. But also there was Shannon. She went in to hug him, and she saw me, and she grinned at me over his shoulder. And right away, I knew that I had lost a battle in a war that had never been declared. I waited and I watched as their relationship became more intense. And this was so hard because as I'd been growing up, I had already watched Tom go through two other engagements that had fallen apart. The next summer I became the assistant director because I'm one of those people who folks tend to trust and give more responsibility in jobs. And Shannon also became an assistant director of day camp, which meant that they put us in this little RV out back behind the lodge. And Tom's room was right across the way, a little screened in porch behind the kitchen. And so he would come and hang out with us at night. We would sit up late talking. And I could see how bored Shannon was when we were talking about anything other than herself or whatever she wanted to talk about. But Tom and I had so much fun talking about music and politics and just making up jokes. Eventually it got worse. Tom gave her a kayak, which is like the camp version of a ring. And then he gave her a real ring, but in the background, especially that summer when we were living together, Shannon was trash talking him. I remember her flopping back on the bed in that RV and saying, I just don't know if I can live with a guy who just wants to be at camp all the time. I couldn't believe that she would be so callous about living my dream. So of course, because she didn't value him, it was never going to work out. Eventually, by the time we were about to graduate from college, she gave back the kayak and the ring. And I knew it wasn't quite time for me to have hope. But in my heart, a little spark got a little bit brighter. But in the meantime, like I said, I graduated from college. All of my friends had gone on to grad school, but I was out of money and ambition after having just gotten an English degree. But there was no English factory. I couldn't go make English. And so at the end of that last summer after college, to my great delight, the folks who ran the camp invited me to move in and help run the retreat center. I could become full time hospitality. And I thought this was a great idea because, well, at the end of the day, it was positioning me to be there when Tom would come around to the life plan, that we should become married and run the camp together and sit in the rocking and watch the children play. But what I didn't factor into this plan is that at the end of the summer, the kids go away, the songs go away, skid nights go away, and camp just becomes this very cold, dark, lonely place. So I knocked around in the craft cabin making candles, got a job in the video store so I could bring back piles of videos, mostly the X Files, did a little dinner theater, and eventually it was spring and then it was summer. And the kids came back, songs came back, skitdites came back, and Tom came back. But you know what? So did Andy. Andy was the. This new character who I'd never seen before. And Andy was a Methodist preacher's kid, just like me. Now, I don't know if you've heard about preacher's kids. There's a lot of lore. There's this spectrum. On one side you've got the goody two shoes Bible thumpers, and on the other side you've got the woo boy. Lock up your sons and daughters. Here we go. That's a hellion. And I was somewhere in the middle of all that. I definitely had some good times in college, but I was mostly being the DD to everybody else's wild abandon. Andy had definitely been sent to camp that summer because he had done something very wrong. And he was there to work off his penance by washing dishes in the kitchen all summer long. He was dark and sarcastic and sardonic, and he was. Was the perfect foil for all of my hopey floaty feelings about Tom. Right away, we were at it. We were picking each other all the time. We would debate everything from politics to whether or not irregardless was a word. And somewhere along the way, I confided to Andy how I felt about Tom, which, if you're unfamiliar with crushes, is kind of how they work. I mean, this is true for little kids, but when crush is also the only way you know how to do romance in adult life, all you can do is find a person to tell your secret so you can keep the energy of the crush going. And that's what I did with Angie. And he loved it. We talked about it night and day. We just stirred it like compost. So in my job as the assistant director at the camp, I would have to go to town frequently to buy baked potatoes and band aids. And pretty quickly, Andy declared to me that he was going to town with me. He mostly said it was because he wanted to get. Get away from the screaming little children and so he could smoke off of campus. But eventually I had to kind of wonder if Andy just liked spending time with me. So one night deep in the summer, we get into the car as we're going back from the grocery store and look up, and the mountain that the camp is on just disappears behind a wall of clouds. It's like the nothingness from the Neverending Story had just come and taken the mountain away. And before we know it, we're having to Drive through this violent summer storm. Trees are going sideways. And then I look up and there's this ball of light in the tree, like we're being sent a message from God. And then I realize actually what it is, is that the tree has been struck by lightning. And then it topples over. Which means. Which means that we have to skid to a halt. And Andy and I ditch the car with all the groceries and supplies in and we run up to the retreat center. Our clothes are soaking wet. We come colliding through the door. And I feel Andy's body collide into mine as I think he's about to embrace me. But I am not ready for this. So I take off running down the hallway. I go up to the my room and I get Andy some dry clothes and towels. I get myself some dry clothes. We sit down in the retreat center, in the lounge, on this couch, so far apart from each other. It was like you could have built the Great Wall of China between us. I mean, the tension was so thick at this point, you could have cut it with a chainsaw, which was what they were outside trying to cut down the tree to get us back up the camp road with. We sat there and watched the X Files. So who did you take off to.
