At the age of 10, I was exiled to New Hampshire for a month to attend Camp Berea, an all-boys Christian summer camp. Strongly scented memories percolate from the memory clusters of that period: My father's daily postcards, which were so wryly hysterical that the founder of the camp began to read them out loud to the camp every mail call. A hoard of sweets and lukewarm soda cans, stashed underneath my mattress for comfort on lonely, homesick nights. My best friend, also a John, who looked exactly like a young, androgynous Christina Ricci, thus tickling my own innate, pre-pubertal homoeroticism. Endlessly poring through a care package of comics my parents sent me, which included omnibuses of "Flash Gordon" and "Fearless Fosdick." The terrifying, wide-eyed marionette who was trotted out every night after dinner to compel us in nightmarish falsetto to give ourselves over to the Lord. "Reflection:" a form of punishment for bad behavior in which one was sent into a large room full of mirrors for an hour and forced to consider the infinite reflection of one's own sinful flesh. The time I got lost in the woods, was confronted by a bear and had no choice but to become born again (an offer since rescinded) to escape a mauling. Chopping the tip of my thumb off with a hatchet.

Good times. But the Fun Float will always be my most vibrant childhood memory.

Imagine a gigantic banana-yellow trampoline, floating on a lake. A thousand slippery children climbing all over it, laughing, pushing, hurling each other over the brink with a splash. You have to be a good swimmer to make your way out to it, and even when wistfully stared upon from the shoreline, it is clearly no domain for the meek. It was the Zembla of the Big Kids, the Red Bands... those kids who'd proven themselves able enough swimmers to paddle their way past wading depths... largely through a tortuous rite of passage involving a two mile swim and the ability to touch the hand of a submerged, scuba-ing instructor, sitting Indian style on the lake's slimy bottom.

After two weeks of staring from the shoreline upon the mirage-like Ilium of the Fun Float — a bouncing pleasure palace of raucous delight — I successfully completed these tasks. My arms aching, I swam two miles as a camp counselor paddled his way behind me, encouragingly booming out a recitation of the Trials of Christ — NIV, of course — that echoed boisterously across the lake. Filling my lungs with air, I dived to the lake's cthonic depths and high-fived my swimming instructor among the scum-sucking catfish; popping up to the surface, blood vessels in both of my eyes burst. I'd suffered for the Fun Float. I would be let among the Red Bands.

But as I pulled myself up its slippery skin for the first time, I could immediately see that not everything was as it appeared from the shore. I had imagined it as a peaceful place... a sort of bobbing Neverland of youthful camaraderie. It was not... or, at least, not for fifth graders. For us? A pocket of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. Lord of the Flies. Cannibalistic Apocalypse. Jacob's Ladder. Bosch's Hell.

The Fun Float sagged in the middle: a killing pit in which smaller and flabbier kids grabbed their ruptured spleens, vomited lake water and wept for their mommies. And those god-like lake Adonises, the fabled Red Bands, the brothers I had proven worthy of by trial of fire? They were eighth graders, twice my size. And when their eyes fell upon me, they lit up and smacked their lips with malevolent glee. I didn't hear the cries of welcome I expected. All I heard was:

"Hey! New fish! Get him."

The mind races quickly when the body is put in bone-breaking peril. As the nearest advanced upon me and grabbed by my throat — a leering, sun-burnt mutant — I acted out of self-preseving instinct. All of a sudden, my perception on the Fun Float changed: this wasn't like a playground, it was like a prison. The only way to earn the respect of the murderous thugs with whom I was isolated? I needed to take down the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the place... quick, hard and brutally. And, as luck would have it, that motherfucker had already attacked.

So I grabbed him as hard as I could by the testicles and squeezed. No remorse.

Instantly, he let me go, squealing like a castrati. But I couldn't let it go there. I couldn't just win this battle. I had to win all the battles that were to come. I had to break him.

I twisted.

The mutant screamed. His legs went out from under him and he loudly smacked onto the Fun Float's skin, his arms and legs thrashing. Immediately his friends were upon me, lifting me off and hurling me off the Fun Float. But I still didn't let go. Instead, I slammed into the side of the buoying lake trampoline, holding on to my place among the Red Bands with ferocious resolve by my only grip: another Red Band's taint. I would not give up my place upon the Fun Float so easily.

It was chaos. Everyone was screaming. My tormentor — now my helpless victim — screamed for help; the mutant began kicking me in the chest as he was slowly pulled off the Fun Float along with me. But his fellow Red Bands misunderstood his high-pitched yelps for assistance. He wanted them to pry my fingers off. Instead, they grabbed him by the arms and held him fast, just at the point when we might both have slid into the water. Ninety pounds of kicking, screaming fifth-grader fought the force of gravity upon his scrotum.

It was too much for him. With one last sow-like squeal, he passed out. Triumphantly I climbed up his slack, bloated body to take my rightful place as the King of the Red Bands.

But this story does not have a happy ending. It was not to be. I was denied the Fun Float. Camp counselors, hearing a rather one-sided version of the ordeal, demoted me back to the humiliating level of blue band (prerequisite: doggie-style paddling). I spent the next two weeks having the crap beaten out of me every day (punctuated dutifully with a haymaker to the nuts) by fifty outraged eight graders for my trouble.

In retrospect, I might have overreacted.

Buy a Fun Float now for your kids! Starting at only $2000!

Aqua Jump Water Trampoline [Rave Sports]