Your Child Will Be Disenrolled from Camp Unless You Upload a Form That You’ve Never Heard of and We Will Not Explain

Dear Parent,

This is an automatically generated message. A sweep of our camp registration system indicates we’re missing information we need in order to welcome your camper. The due date for this information has passed, and if we don’t receive it by the end of the day, your camper will be unable to join us.

Please upload the following item(s): PERSEPHONE CODEX.

For your convenience, below is a checklist of the records that staff must receive by no later than two weeks ago.

Your checklist has eighteen green checkmarks and one enormous red X.

The X is next to: PERSEPHONE CODEX

Your missing PERSEPHONE CODEX puts you in violation of Section 14, subpart 8, little “i” in the parent handbook, OBSCURE FORMS.

You’re so, so close to getting this right. You hand-delivered a sheaf of paper to your pediatrician for last-minute completion. You burst into awkward, frustrated tears while offering cash, seriously, anything to get these done. You definitely caused the doctor to add a weird note to your child’s chart that will follow them to college.

As a result, you successfully uploaded:

• IMMUNIZATION RECORD
• ROUTINE PHYSICAL, and
• “HIGH-STRUNG PARENT” RED-FLAG WARNING

And you didn’t stop there. You kept at it, blearily filling out form after form in a profanity-laced all-nighter. You paid a king’s ransom to Vital Statistics for a new copy of your camper’s birth certificate to prove that they exist, are human, and were, at one time, an infant.

Great work. We have also verified your:

• CAMPER MEDICATION LIST
• LAST TWELVE PHYSICAL ADDRESSES, and
• NAME OF MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER’S LEAST-FAVORITE CHILDHOOD DOG

We are still reviewing your:

• MEAL PREFERENCES
• ACTIVITY SELECTIONS, and
• CRUDE RENDERING OF EDVARD MUNCH’S THE SCREAM, IN WHICH THE SCREAMER APPEARS TO BE FLIPPING THE BIRD, FLANKED BY A SPEECH BUBBLE THAT SAYS, “FUCK CAMP”

We’re guessing that last item may have been an accidental upload. As a general rule, we completely ignore these items, except when we’re drinking and making fun of entitled parents, their particular shortcomings, and their total lack of artistic skill.

Not you, of course. Other parents.

So that’s almost everything. We only need: PERSEPHONE CODEX

What is PERSEPHONE CODEX? As outlined in the parent handbook, Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest. She is also the trapped spouse of Hades, the god of the Underworld.

A codex is an ancient text, usually tome-shaped, with script and illustrations inked onto lambskin pages by silent monks.

Does this mean that we need a codex belonging to Persephone? A codex written by Persephone? Some kind of safety phone your kid can keep in a purse, and we’re just terrible spellers?

Maybe we don’t need a codex at all—just an enrollment code—but we added the letter “X” because it looked cool?

Whatever it is, it’s the only thing standing between you and a SUMMER OF FUN FOR YOUR CAMPER (i.e., your only option for three months of childcare, which you’ve had to figure out every single year since your kid hit school age, and somehow this is still the only system available).

Look, just upload PERSEPHONE CODEX by two weeks ago, or we will disenroll your camper. We will then drop you to the bottom of a waitlist that contains half the families in a three-county radius, post you on our “Parent Hall of Shame,” and call your boss.

And, of course, we will relegate you to the Underworld, which in this context will be your office. That is where you and your camper will spend the summer, drawing on a pile of coloring books and simmering with unmitigated rage.

But that can all be avoided if you get your act together and give us what we need. What we need may be totally unclear, but what is clear is that we don’t have it.

We do, however, have your BANK ACCOUNT and ROUTING NUMBERS. For your convenience, we debited payment for the first week of camp last month.

Because, while we may be missing PERSEPHONE CODEX and your last hope for summer sanity, we are definitely not missing your tuition. As stated in the handbook: it’s nonrefundable.