That's it, gather round the campfire, Hammerheads. (Hey, listen, you guys chose the camp mascot, not me. It was a fair vote, even if you now regret the spirit of facetiousness in which the majority of you seem to have cast it!)

Everybody take a seat on one of these unfortunately somewhat wet logs, provided by Camp Counselor Betty. That's okay, Betty, I'm sure you did your best. Still, you must have searched pretty hard to find a dozen wet logs in THIS forest, considering that it has been ravaged by an almost unprecedented drought for the last month!

Speaking of which, the Fire Marshal threatened me with arrest if we carried through with our plans for a bonfire in this scenic glade of ours, so we're going to have to settle for a few dying embers, I'm afraid, borrowed from a far more robust conflagration down the road, where the lucky beggars (the somewhat more reasonably named "Sharks") are actually camping out on the sandy island in the middle of Lake Whatchamahassee.

By the way, I talked to my counterpart, Rick, this afternoon and reminded him that a Hammerhead IS a shark and so his group is basically stealing our animal representative. Of course, I put it much more delicately than that (you attract more flies with honey, after all), but I made it clear that you guys weren't happy about them using what was essentially OUR mascot.Yo, Egbert, I know it's a little nippy tonight, but let's keep at least three feet between our tennis shoes and the flames, yes? (or should I say the "flamelettes"?) if only so that we can all fit around this sorry excuse for a fire. Better yet, hustle over to your cabin and get your jacket. I promise I won't start my spooky campfire story until you're back.Anyway, Rick is like, "We voted on the name 'Sharks' yesterday on the shuttle bus from town, before we had even arrived at camp."

"Well," I said, "naturally, I sympathize with your position, old buddy, old chum: we've worked here together what, eight summers now?" however, I gave him to understand (very politely, to be sure) that a team vote prior to arrival on camp premises can hardly be considered binding, and that the first official "on-site" vote should be respected, in which case our last night's adoption of the name "Hammerhead" should prove definitive -- nay, more: It should logically gainsay the subsequent adoption of any mascots bearing a potentially confusing taxonomic relationship to the Hammerhead, as, for example, Shark is merely the name of the master set containing hundreds of more specific cartilaginous monikers, including mako, galapagos, spiny dogfish, the great white of course, and yes, even Hammerheads!

Warmer now, Egbert? That-a boy. Take a seat -- er, I mean a log. If anyone else is cold, get your jackets now or forever shut your traps on the subject of the ever-plummeting temperature out here, yes? -- ha ha! ahem -- because I'm about to begin one of my famously spine-chilling tales, and I don't want any suspense-limiting interruptions. In fact, if any of you have to "spend a penny," you know where the latrine is. (And do keep using it, by the way. Yes, there was a rather large spider in there last night, but it turned out it wasn't venomous, remember? We phoned in to headquarters back at the lodge and they looked it up on the Internet -- and in any case, we have subsequently relocated the admittedly gnarly looking creature to the neighboring camp -- for their own naturalistic edification of course! (Wait till THEY see it! Ha ha! No, seriously, we left it a good six feet from their latrine. If it decides to wander in there, it has no one to blame but itself!)

But where was I? Oh, yes: So Rick's like, "Since when have you become such an expert on sharks?"

Here, Betty, sit on the log beside me -- it seems to be slightly less inexplicably drenched than all the others that you collected for us! We grown-ups have got to stick together out here in the wilderness, surrounded as we are by a dozen young people who could go wild on us at any moment. Hey, listen, I read "Lord of the Flies" in high school like everybody else: I know what young teenagers like yourselves are capable of. (Aye, don't give me those innocent stares. You know very well that if we so much as turned our backs on you, you'd be plotting how to serve the two of us for tomorrow's lunch! Chester here would be like: "Oi! Somebody find a cauldron! And, Carlos, run over to the camp store and buy every carrot you can find: frozen, room temperature, whatever! I want to try out an old family recipe that my great grandfather is said to have used when he and his scout troop were shipwrecked on a desert island back in the late 1800s. He's said to have called it 'Sweet and Sour Camp Counselor'!"

Not that I'm prejudiced against males, mind you. Females (bless them) get into their fair share of mischief, too, in these egalitarian times. That's right, "they've come a long way, baby," yes? Why it was just last season that I....

(Don't laugh, Betty, somebody could have gotten hurt: namely me!)

Fortunately, there's no time right now for me to tell you THAT story. (Whew!) But I will say THIS: I have taken a vow:

I am never again going to wake up in my pajamas in the middle of Lake Whatchamahassee on a blow-up raft! And you can take that to the bank! (or rather to the Lake Whatchamahassee Credit Union just up the road here).Okay, Ralph, you can put another twig on the fire, but let that burn down before we add any more, yes? Good man.

Anyway, I'm like, "Cut me some slack, Rick."

And he's like, "Well, I'm sorry, but we're not changing our mascot name."And I'm like, "You don't have to shout!"

And he's like, "I'm not shouting!" but of course he HAD been shouting, and he was shouting louder than ever now, and he was even starting to get "up in my face" from a physical point of view. Can you believe it? Rick Stavoski, veteran camp counselor, Mr. Grace-under-Pressure?

So I says, "Rick, don't be getting all up in my face like that." (He was beginning to get on my nerves now.)

"Or what?" says he.

"Or so help me, as God is my witness, I will -- "

Well, it looks like everyone's got their jackets. Now, if someone will pass me a flashlight so that I can shine it up at my face as per the usual procedure in such campfire storytelling.

What's that? No, we didn't come to fisticuffs, thank goodness. Remember, kids, fighting doesn't solve anything, does it? Of course it doesn't. No, I just told him that I was, frankly, disappointed in his obvious childishness, and would he be so good as to scoot off back to his precious "Sharks" before I gave him a well-deserved tongue lashing? And scoot he did.

Of course, to the untrained ear, it sounds like we were having a major argument, but Rick and I always communicate in this edgy fashion, as if by force of habit, just to liven things up around here. You've no idea how boring it gets in this sprawling facility on weekdays in the early spring and late autumn. I'll be at the breakfast table and he'll be like: "Pass me the Apple Jacks, dude," and I'll be like, "What's the magic word?" And he'll be like, "What do you mean, the magic word?" And I'll be like --

Well, you get the idea. That's the way we keep our wits sharp, you know, with a little verbal sparring each and every day, just like a black belt will sometimes pay a mock enemy to attack him when he least expects it so that the martial artist's karate chops don't lose any of their wonted efficacy.

Wonted efficacy: w-o-n-t-e-d e-f-f-i--

Oh, never mind. Believe me, you guys won't need to use the phrase "wonted efficacy" for years to come -- if ever. Still, you never know: you may someday become a stuffy old aesthete such as myself, in which case such tropes will become indispensable.

Tropes: t-r-o--

Oh, never mind. It's getting late, and I still haven't made anybody's flesh creep.

But before I begin my story, I must warn you that I'm not allowed to make this too scary due to insurance reasons. Suffice it to say that the camp lawyers are still dealing with a lawsuit from a parent whose child allegedly suffered repeated nightmares after hearing an admittedly very robust and adjective-filled telling of the Loch Ness monster legend, told for added effect at lakeside, just up the road at Lake Whatchamahassee itself, by a camp counselor whose name shall remain anonymous here, except that it starts with a "B" and that the person in question tends to return from her wood-gathering expeditions with surprisingly wet specimens.No, seriously, Betty, you told a great story. Of course, in retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to have that accomplice counselor of yours snorkeling about in the lake, ready to unleash that six-foot-tall blow-up Nessie at the climactic conclusion of your tale.

Betty was like: "And some say, the monster still roams these very waters, searching its sandy shoreline for more helpless human victims... LIKE YOU GUYS!"

And with that obviously pre-planned cue, the water-treading accomplice shoved the hitherto shadow-hidden "monster" toward the shore-bound campers, until the bright green plastic eyes of the dragon-like creature twinkled ominously in the glow of the storyteller's firelight, not five feet from the now terrified faces of the tweenage audience, who no sooner saw it than they stood up en masse and high-tailed it into the nearby forest, every mother's son of them, screaming like so many banshees!

But not to worry -- by sunrise (and with a little friendly help from the local police force) we had found every last one of them.

Only, as I say, one parent got strangely bent out of shape when she finally learned about the incident, hence our current legal problems. Right, so now if I can get this flashlight adjusted appropriately, I will present the story of "The Initially Terrifying (but ultimately Not So Horrible as it had at first appeared to be) CREATURE FROM THE CAMPGROUND!"

Once upon a time, there was a group of campers sitting around a fire, much like this one, although this is technically more like a heap of embers than a fire.

Anyway, they were worried because they had heard stories about a giant... scary... MONSTER that roamed the nearby woods, looking for campers to....GOBBLE UP! Mouhahaha!

Oh, dear, Freddie, are you already whimpering over there?

No, no, no, listen, Freddie, the monsters in question are only one foot tall -- yes? --

And do you know what they look like, Freddie? Freddie, listen to me: do you know what they look like? (That's it, chin up, old man.)

They look like beagles, Freddie! Can you believe it: silly little beagles!That's right, gang: so it was obvious, wasn't it? They couldn't gobble up any of us if they WANTED TO! They were just silly beagle-like monsters, nothing more! Besides, we'd kick their sorry you-know-whats into Lake Whatchamahassee if they even THOUGHT about gobbling us up, wouldn't we, Freddie? (Darn right we would!)

See? So there's nothing to be afraid of, is there?

There, you feel better now, don't you, guys?

Good. Although these generous storyline concessions of mine seem to have let most, if not all, of the air out of my melodramatic balloon here.Oh, fiddlesticks! Let's turn this story of mine into a comedy, gang, yes? I mean, the quote-unquote "fire" that we're sitting in front of now is a real "laugh," anyway, isn't it?

Right, then.

Oi, Jefferson. Who gave you permission to fall asleep over there, son? (I guess I'd better get on with the story, huh? before any more of you nod off. Even Betty here looks a little more languid than usual -- although admittedly I can hardly see her in the almost non-existent light of this "fire." Thank heavens there's a gibbous moon out tonight or she'd be positively invisible.)

Look at Alex over there. He's like, "What the heck does 'gibbous' mean?" Well, sorry, Al, but if God wanted me to tell you the definition of "gibbous," He wouldn't have created dictionaries, would He? Or She, Betty, or She! (Wow! Good thing you're here, Betty, old girl, or I rather fancy my sexism would be on autopilot this evening! Whoo-hoo! Ahem.)

Right, so, guys -- Freddie, listen up: you'll want to hear how this so-called "creature" really gets what he deserves, okay? You'll like this.

So this so-called "creature of the campground" approaches the campers, going, "EEEE OOOO EEEE OOOO!" or words to that effect.

Of course, the monster thinks he's going to scare them away from the fire so that he can pull up a log of his own and roast some of the marshmallows that he's noticed in a package on the nearby picnic table.But then, the bravest boy of the group, this kid named Freddie, see? He stands up and says, "Stop! You are a bad monster! Where do you get off trying to scare us like this?"

Well, the monster's floored, of course. He expected everybody to get up and run, but now it seemed that all the kids, inspired by the bravery of Freddie, were no longer scared of him at all!

The monster's like, "Whaaaa....???"

(That's right, Betty, the monster was like "Whaaaa....????" Do you have a problem with that? Jeepers creepers, everybody's a critic nowadays!)So he turns around, ready to mope off into the woods -- but then Freddie's like: "Yo, monster: If you promise to be nice, you can roast marshmallows with us. We were just listening to a story by this camp counselor chap here, and now that he's done, we are going to have a little snack."Hearing which agreeable proposal, the camp counselor (hello? that's me, gang) promptly handed out marshmallow-roasting sticks to everyone, including Freddie here... (here you go, Freddie)... and Ralph.... (here you are, Ralph).... and Nguyen (there you go, old man)... and one to Sam... (Well, not to Sam, since Sam was sound asleep at the time. Speaking of which, Betty, why don't you nudge young Rip Van Winkle there and help him sleep-walk back to his cabin, before he leans backward and falls into the undergrowth.) And finally, the camp counselor handed a roasting stick to the monster -- who, it will be recalled, was the spitting image of a floppy-eared hound dog! (and as such, he no doubt grabbed the end of the stick with his toothy but, at the end of the day, harmless mouth).Right, two marshmallows each, gang, and then I want you to "hit some serious sack," yes?

Freddie, are you good with that?

Oh, look, Betty, he's smiling. Make a note of that for our lawyers just in case: "Freddie was smiling at 10:35 P.M., notwithstanding his previous whimpering: this was a good 10 minutes AFTER he had heard the story about the "creature from the campground."

See? So we didn't scare anyone at all, did we? In fact, we appear to have made them downright drowsy. But then every silver lining has its dark cloud, I suppose.

Tim, Chen, Alvarez -- take the camp bucket and get some water from the lake to put out this fire. It may look like it's already out, but we can't take any chances -- especially since the local Fire Marshal is such an ornery rascal who appears to be just waiting for me to make one false step! (Oops. Did I say that out loud? No, that couldn't have been ME talking, folks!)

Oh, yeah, and before we break up, everybody gather round in a tight circle here, right around this alleged "fire" of ours, hands piled on top of hands, one after the other (that's it) .... you too, Egbert. Get your hands in there now.

Now, on the count of three, throw your fists in the air and shout our camp slogan -- you know, the one that I just made up. Here, let me whisper it to you guys....)

Ready? On the count of 3:

1, 2, 3...

Hammerhead, Hammerhead, Baker's Man, Nail me a Shark, as Fast as you Can!

Gooooooooooooooo Hammerheads!

What? Well, if you guys should dream up a better one overnight, let me know in the morning, yes? (Humph. It sounded fine to ME!)