Once upon a time, in the 1970s, in a snuggly hamlet close to the beach lived — for many summers — about 100 girls, at any one time.  And they would grow up and know each other for decades and decades.  But not yet.

And some years spun by and the little girls became hormonal teenagers.  And, as hormonal teenagers, the subjects of sex, drugs and — alas, not rock ‘n roll, but — punk captivated each and every brain cell in their still-formative minds.

There was one such girl, shy in her youth and averse to tongue kissing (let’s not discuss Greg Pogarsky), whose hormones would transform her, in her teenage years, into, well, let’s think of the caterpillar turning into the butterfly.

And more years spun by and now the girl is 50.  And Septembers bring her back to that snuggly little hamlet filled with love and friends, like a genetic homing instinct.

The smell of the air is the same as it was in our youth.  We all breathe in so deeply as if to capture the memories in our bodies’ organs.

And karma is a boomerang.  And it plays out like a maestro hitting our emotional buttons.

[play music to suggest that the idyllic story takes a turn for the humorous and slightly ooky]

And now she is a mom of a college freshman son.

And in the serene place where we can be as carefree as we were decades ago, technology and too much information intrude.  And in the same place (Google doesn’t discern between the steps of Lodge 1 or Lodge 2) as she pined for a young man named Will, came . . . .

“OMG, my son just got to college and he slept with a girl!!!”

“He texted you that?”  All of us were thinking, but one person said.

“They spent the night together but I don’t know what happened, HAPPENED!  I am trying to find out by asking if he put his sheets in the laundry.”

GREEK CHORUS: “Understated, yet smart.”

“Wrong question.  He is a BOY.   No matter what happened, he is not changing his sheets.“

GREEK CHORUS: sigh, “Truth”.

“Do you really need this information?” asked a sage one.

GREEK CHORUS: “NO one needs this knowledge.”

“DOES HE HAVE CONDOMS?” asked ALL of us.

GREEK CHORUS: “Is this ready for prime time?”

“I don’t know!! Ok.  This is a first!!” [“Ok, HOW do you know that?” thought all of us.]

GREEK CHORUS:  “We are closing our ears. We can’t HEAR you!!”

“Ok, congratulate him for ALL of us.  Now, make sure that he has condoms,” said another sage one.

GREEK CHORUS: “Wait, this isn’t Braxton Family Values or Crazy Wives of [pick a City]. Let’s play on.”

Coincidentally, one among us is not only a professor at the young man’s college, but a professor of human sexuality.

“I would be happy to deliver the condoms in a see-through bag while I am on the campus.  Is it ok if I say, ‘a group of your mother’s middle-age friends are very happy for you, but use these, please?‘“

GREEK CHORUS:  “This is a whole new reality genre, like Naked Dating.  Let’s hang out; we may be revived by something other than a Shakespeare festival!”

[Revert to the fairy tale music]

The morals of the story, as you can plainly see:

• You do it, you live with it (you along with a posse of older women).
• Stop texting your mother about these things.
• Things are only sacred if they aren’t bloggable.

And we all lived happily ever after, looking forward to the next visit to Camp Wingate.

Sounds like the start of a joke, huh?

Well, we do have our own odd communal sense of humor — and propriety.

First, a little background:

1. And most of us are comfortably in our middle-age (but we look — to each other — as if we are still campers).
2. We all feel close to each other, regardless of the facts — many of us only recently met at reunions.
3. Those of us who did know each other at camp now share each other’s food, drink, and menopausal medications.
4. As we age, we need to add supplements to our foods, and those supplements vary.

And that closeness has its draw-backs.

Imagine one middle-age camper’s surprise upon learning that, after taking a gulp of another’s coffee, it was laced with the mother lode of Miralax.  One camper’s constipation became another camper’s . . . . well, you know.

By lunchtime, the following conversation ensued:

“Hey, yo, [Constipated one], I am f^&*ing stinking up Lodge 2 because I can’t stop shitting!  How much of that stuff do you need?”

“I need a lot because I have not gone in a while.“

“How constipated?  So long, as in an enema with a vacuum?” I offered (not so helpfully).

“Let’s ask the doctors here.  You need help.  And I need to stop friggin’ shitting my brains out!”

“Oh, gross, we cannot talk about this about lunch.“

Ha.  Of course we can.  Those assembled asked about our friend’s colon, intestines and just how much Miralax she takes (with every meal and then some).  I renewed my suggestion about a vacuum.

Thereafter at every meal, we discussed the progress of “things”.  The bizarro nature and the hilarity of it all got people laughing so hard, that yet another camper peed in her pants.

“I’ve had THREE children.  These things happen!“

And no one thought otherwise.

Next installment:  Twelve 50 year-old women are talking about their children’s sex lives. . . .

Wingate is like Brigadoon. A magical place that exists in the hearts of so many and is accessible once a year in September.  And, during that weekend in September, a cohort  — ages late 30s to early 60s — enters a timeless place, where we bask in memories and incorporate the reality of our lives as adults.

There are rules:

• We start the weekend at the “Winter House,” where Pearl reigns.
• We only dance to 70s music.
• We move in packs, never letting go of a hand, a hug or a smile.
• Meals are for re-fueling and picture-taking.
• The bunks are only for the tough; those of us over a certain age must seek refuge elsewhere.

As to the last bullet point, let’s get a few facts on record.

1. Cape Cod, with a few exceptions, has only motor lodges and similar lodgings.
2. The Four Seasons, Balazs and the Ritz-Carlton (never mind Klimpton or other international brands) have not come to Yarmouth, Massachusetts.
3. And we didn’t get an invitation to the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis.
4. We were staying at the Camp until it was time to sleep, so the accommodations needed only to be clean and passable.
5. I only had to exceed the low expectations of staying in a bunk, with beds that had prison mattresses and communal toilets, etc., that are really only ok if you are under 16.

So I picked the Days Inn.  Not the Travelodge (more of a story) or the Econolodge.  The Days Inn.  Why, I thought, pay a lot for sleeping in a bed?  Our Brigadoon awaited us a Camp Wingate not at any hotel, motel or bed and bugfest.

Of course, because many decided that the bunk was too harsh and wanted a reservation at the Days Inn, I overbooked.  And, in my anxiety to book as many rooms as we all needed, I accidentally also booked the Travelodge (who can really tell the difference on-line????)  AT LEAST I ESCHEWED ANYTHING WITH “ECONO” IN THE NAME.

I have the dubious honor of being a rewards customer at the Days Inn.  If you book a zillion non-refundable rooms reservations by accident, you not only get special passes, but a visit from the CEO.  It is like having a platinum Sears card.

Still, the masses were not happy. They read reviews on-line about the “hotel”.  I had just spent visiting day at a “fine lodging” and it was gross.  So, I knew that the Days Inn was no better or worse than anything else.

After much hemming and hawing, and Pearl’s having laughed at my choice, my dear friend concluded, after some equivocation, that it could be worse — we could be in South Sudan.

South Sudan?  Whoa, I feel sooooo much better.  At least there is a worse place on Earth than where I had booked so many rooms that there is an indoor pool named after me in the very place we stayed.

We all laughed, knowing, tomorrow, we would drive back to Brigadoon.

Next installment — Janet2’s ebbs and flows and how Goldie literally ran afoul of them.