When I was fifteen years old, my parents sent me to fat camp. It was one of those awful places that advertised in the back of magazines like Sunset and Better Homes and Gardens. Places for parents to send their awkward, overweight social misfits, and eight weeks later pick up a slim, optimistic future prom queen.

The whole drive up there I had to resist screaming and begging for them to turn around. We finally pulled up to an apartment complex that operated as a University of California-Santa Barbara dorm during the school year. Now, I was a big girl, I'll admit to that. After all, I did get sent to fat camp, didn't I? But, man, let me tell you, I saw sizes and shapes I didn't know were even possible!

We had to wake up at seven in the morning every day to run a mile before breakfast. After that was an eight hour day filled with aerobics, step aerobics, sports and bike riding, with carefully portioned meals to puncture the monotony. There were group meetings where we'd all have to sit around and share our feelings, though now that I think about it they were probably just keeping close tabs on the kids that were close to snapping.

Sundays were usually a half day, although we all had to put on our bathing suits and get weighed out on the front lawn in the morning - part of the ritualistic shaming portion of the program. Those that were too large for regular scales had to get in a van and ride to the post office to use one of their bulk rate scales.

Now, the exercise I had expected to be torturous, that was sort of a given considering the nature of the beast. It was everything else that I found so wholly traumatic and wrong. The way we were paraded around in public for what seemed like the sole purpose of embarrassing us. I mean, does Slip n' Slide with about a hundred fat kids sound like a good idea? And, to top it off, it was on the side of the road right next to the frat houses, where all the tenants decided to get drunk and watch the free entertainment.

When we went out on 'field trips' they would make everyone stay together in a big group. Imagine going to the mall, or the beach, or hell, even K-Mart, and seeing a huge crowd of extremely large kids. I think the counselors took a certain delight in herding us around town. Our jogging route went right through the center of the frat and sorority neighborhood. Things weren't turning out to be as discreet as the advertisement had proclaimed the camp would be. If anything, this experience taught me that when large people travel in large groups, they tend to attract more attention.

There was another camp sharing the apartment complex with us for the summer. Volleyball camp. Good mix, I thought. They threw donuts at us one night after dinner. Most of us threw them back, but those three kids that started picking them up made us all look bad.

The weirdest part of all was that, contrary to what you'd believe, fat camp was an extremely cliquey place. Everywhere you looked there were all these fat kids hooking up with each other, forming little hierarchies of power and popularity, it was completely ridiculous. If you thought middle school was bad, these people were downright evil. I'm sure they were just working out a few issues, but still.

Some people did cheat while we were there.

One night a group of boy campers tried to sneak out of the dorms by climbing out a window on the first floor. They were going to run down to the corner and grab a pizza, I believe. But their plan was foiled when the third guy out got stuck in the window. And these were pretty big windows, mind you. It took two councilors to get him out, one to push and one to pull. I think the RA's tried to punish him, but it was too hard to keep a straight face.

I made one friend while I was there. This girl TJ, whom I shared a room with. It was us and some weird French Canadian chick who always hid in her closet during the round-up for evening sports.

Me and TJ were not popular, not even at fat camp.

We got in trouble for throwing old fruit at the nurse's station. On one of those rare trips to the outside world where we were allowed to go unsupervised, me and TJ pooled out money and bought a bunch of candy and smuggled it back into camp. Nothing but pure milk chocolate bars, like gold bricks in that place. So we marked them up and sold them to the other kids all summer. Our plan was to throw of the curve so it looked like we were losing more weight than the others.

All I can say about fat camp is, parents, please don't send your children here. Get them a personal trainer, get rid of all the food in the house, buy a gym, just don't put your children through what I went through.

Not only is it wholly traumatic, but if words gets out at their high school where they spent the summer, they're twice damned.

Picnic For One