At Four
“Marv, do you want some birthday cake?” Art’s counselor asked.
“What’s that about?” I replied.
“You know, it’s your brother’s birthday,” Art’s counselor reminded me. “The chef whipped up a cake for his table. He asked if you might come over to share.”
Mom had negotiated a deal for me to be a counselor by signing up three of her five children as campers. Art was Camp Webatuck’s youngest at four years old. He was placed in a cabin with five to six-year-old boys.
I joined in singing ‘happy birthday’ while forking down a slice of cake.
“We’ll talk later, Art,” I whispered to him.
Aside: Camp Webatuck would survive for a year or two more as a liberal, interracial effort located in New York State’s Berkshire Mountains. Aside from Pete Seeger’s visit and a plague of lice, the Camp remains memorable because with Victor Fink’s position as music director his daughter Janis Fink (aka Janis Ian) attended as a camper.
“Art, why did you tell them that today is your birthday?” I asked when dinner ended.
“Well, I noticed that kids from different tables were getting cake because it was their birthdays. I figured that if I cried and said that nobody here had celebrated my birthday, we might get some cake.”
“But you lied.”
“I didn’t exactly lie,” Art declared.
I was flabbergasted. My baby brother was offering a justification by claiming to have misled rather than to have blatantly lied. On the other hand, I enjoyed my slice of cake. Then it struck me. At four years old fibbing is precocious, and everybody loves a 'bad boy.' Art's quick wit remains one of his most endearing qualities even as he approaches sixty-five years of age.
