Three months before getting married, EW senior writer (and avid EW.com Amazing Race and Real World recapper) Josh Wolk decided his childhood deserved a farewell party. So in 2003 he took a summer leave from the magazine and went back to work at the most idyllic spot of his youth: his beloved sleepaway camp in Maine. His comic memoir about this summer of nostalgia run amok, Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor, arrives in stores today. EW.com presents an exclusive excerpt from the book, in which Wolk celebrates his 34th birthday at camp, and learns there's no better place to feel really old.
Youth ends at age thirty-four. You can be a screw-up in your twenties and early thirties, but once past that, you're expected to have your act together. And your midthirties begin at thirty-four. You can go to bed on the eve of your thirty-fourth birthday ironically wearing a yellowed, twelve-year-old ''Go Perot'' T-shirt and scratching at your spotty goatee, but when you wake up, you'd better be in patterned boxers and have a full-time job with benefits.
There's a symbolic science to that demarcation. Thirty-three is a palindrome, which gives the number an insouciant, free-love vibe that thirty-four just doesn't have: ''Hey, dude, read me forward, read me backward, don't matter to me, it's all good.'' But the fun stops at thirty-four; the fact that the three and the four are sequential symbolizes a plodding necessity to follow the rules. When you have three, it must be followed by four. Do not even think of going back to two, much as you must arrive for work at 9, not 10.
The second day of camp was my thirty-fourth birthday.
During lunch, I was summoned to the phone just outside the chaotic Dining Hall; it was my fiancée Christine, calling to wish me a happy birthday.
''So what's the big plans for your big night?'' she asked. ''Anyone throwing you a party?''
I toed the ground. ''No. Nobody really knows it's my birthday. I don't want to make a big deal of it.''
''No,'' she corrected. ''You don't want to ask anyone to make a big deal out of it. But I'll bet it would make you happy if someone made a big deal out of it on their own volition.''
I'd heard many grooms talk about how their brides knew exactly what they were really thinking, and they portrayed it as a good thing. How was that good? Going along with my false modesty routine would have been preferable to Christine seeing me as the passive-aggressive narcissist I really was.
''I don't want a celebration motivated only by guilt. I can see the card now: 'Dear Josh, Happy birthday! Signed, Our collective sense of obligation.'''
She sighed. ''I love you, and I wish I was there to tell everybody. But I'm not, so go back in there and tell someone for me. I hate being the lone keeper of such a deep, dark secret.''
When I sat back down amidst the lunchtime din, Reg, the Australian waterskiing counselor with whom I supervised a table of five rowdy boys, said, ''Saved you some potato chips. Tougher than you'd think with these animals. Good phone call?''
''Yeah.'' I grabbed the basket and dumped the lingering crushed chip shrapnel on my plate, then reached for the bowl of tuna. ''Christine.'' She was right. Why not share the news? ''Wishing me a happy birthday.''
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