11 The End of Everything

11 The End of Everything "RISE AND SHINE!" announced Uncle Ahdoanwanna the next morning. It was Friday, the last day of camp. We got dressed and went outside to pledge the allegiance. That's when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.

We gathered in a big circle around the flagpole for assembly. Well, that's not the weird part because we do that every morning. The weird part was when we looked up at the flagpole. You'll never believe in a million hundred years what was up there. I'm not gonna tell you. Okay, okay, I'll tell you. IT WAS MY UNDERWEAR! "Somebody snuck into our bunk and stole my underwear!" I shouted. "It had to be Andrea!" "Ooooh," said Ryan. "Andrea stole A.J.'s underwear and hung it from the flagpole! They must be in love!" "When are you gonna get married?" asked Michael. After they took down my underwear and put up the flag, it started raining. Of course! So instead of pickleball, we had to go to arts and farts, where we made lanyards with Aunt Nancy. Do you know what a lanyard is? It's this plastic thing you wear around your neck so you can hang stuff from it.* The whole week, we never played pickleball. We never went rock climbing. We never had

archery. But we had plenty of mosquitoes, bees, ants, flies, mice, and spiders. One of the bunks had a bat fly into it. That must have been interesting. The most exciting part of the week was when the porta-potty man came with this cool truck to empty out the porta-potties. Now that's a tough job. When he was done, we all stood up and gave him a standing ovation. Finally, it was the last night of camp. We went out to the woods, and all the campers gathered in a big circle. The counselors made a bonfire in the middle, and we toasted marshmallows. Yum! Some guy came out with a guitar. He said his name was Uncle Howie, but we were supposed to call him "The Maestro." "Hey, campers!" he shouted. "Are you boys up for a sing-along?" "No!" "Here's a little song I made up," he said. "You sing it to the tune of 'Over There.'"

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And then he started singing... Underwear! Underwear! Send a pair, send a pair, I can wear! For I left mine lying, on the line drying, I need them now but they're not there... That song was pretty cool, but after Andrea stole my underwear and put it up on the flagpole, I wasn't really in the mood to sing that song. After that, we all had to sing "This Land Is Your Land," "Ain't No Flies on Us," "I Like Bananas," "Do Your Ears Hang Low," "Home on the Range," "Little Bunny Foo Foo," "On Top of Spaghetti," "B-I-N-G-O," "I'm Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor," "The Ants Go Marching," "If You're Happy and You Know It," "The Wheels on the Bus," and a million hundred other boring songs. When the fire died down and all the marshmallows were gone, the counselors said we could go out in the field and look at the stars before going back to our bunks. We got down on the grass and looked up at the sky.

"WOW," I said, which is "MOM" upside down. I had never seen so many stars at once. "This is awesome," Ryan said. "There are probably a billion of them up there." "A bazillion," I said. "Maybe we'll see a shooting star." "Where do you think it ends?" asked Neil. "Where does what end?" asked Michael. "The universe," Neil replied. "It seems like it must go on forever." "But it has to end somewhere," said Ryan. Candyman had been pretty quiet as we gazed up at the sky. "The sun is just another star," he told us. "In five billion years, it will run out of hydrogen and become a red giant hot enough to boil the oceans. The gravitational forces will pull all the gases to the center, and the sun will engulf Mercury, Venus, and Earth." It was quiet for a minute or two. "Wait," I said. "What?" "The sun is gonna fade out in a giant spinning cloud of gas and dust," said Candyman. "Then the universe will collapse into itself and the planet we call Earth will disintegrate."