I just got back from being a counselor-in-training at my old summer camp. I was a longtime camper and well-liked by counselors, camp directors, and fellow campers: it only made sense to become a staff member once I came of age. Sure, I was a little late and only got on for the end of the summer sessions, but I was there. Shouldn't five years as camper and CIT--two on the camp's Honor Council--make me a part of the family?

But lying alone in my empty cabin on the last night of camp, surrounded by bunks that looked all the more empty for the posters and sleeping bags that had hung on them just this morning before the parents swooped down the gravel drive and whisked their precious children back to the world of air conditioning and internet connections, listening to the sounds of the other staff members' End-of-Camp party drift across the lake in drunken hoots and hollers, thinking about all the sundresses and pearls and polo shirts and straightened hair and colored trunks adorned with photos of Ponte Vedra Beach and country love songs and South Carolina bumper stickers with palmettos and crescent moons slapped on the backsides of shiny SUVs, I realized how very alone I really was.

I missed a sci-fi convention to babysit future Southern sorority sisters who don't even know what a ten-sided die looks like. Why?