My parents said they knew I could lose the weight on my own, but it’d be so much easier for them not to have to look at me all summer. I expected fat camp to just be a bunch of fat kids, but it was actually just six fat kids and one really fat kid who bullied us for being fat. I remember we once took a canoe out into the middle of the lake and it sank, because we were so fat that we drilled holes in it out of anger. 

Sometimes, we would get on the bus and take a field trip from our cabins (a two minute walk from the lake) to the lake. Lazy, perhaps, but we hated walking because we each had siblings die in wars, where they walk a lot. The lake was awesome, but we hated our rivals across the lake, the rich kids at “overweight” camp.

My summer love was named Mandy, and she was the most beautiful person I had ever met at fat camp that summer. She and I would lay on the grass all night, just looking at the stars and pondering whether we would be able to get back up from the laying-down position. One time we tried to have sex, but we got caught by a religious counselor who said “Ewww don’t do that I’m religious!”

As visiting day approached, we worried our parents wouldn’t recognize us because we had lost such a significant amount of love for them. My parents used to ask if I “felt more comfortable in my body” which made me cry because it reminded me of how limited I was by my physical body in this mortal plane. After my parents left I just kept doing my thing, being fat.

Though it was sad to leave at the end of the summer, the camp director always said her reassuring catchphrase, “Don’t forget to get fat again for next summer!” We all laughed, and it kept a smile on our faces as our parents drove us back home to fat school.