Bunk Placement Clearly More Important than School Teacher Assignment

Marlboro, NJ  (June 9, 2015) – Minutes, maybe even seconds after the camp directors hit send on the Bunk Assignment emails, area mothers are sent into a panic-stricken frenzy to figure out exactly who is in their children’s bunk for the upcoming seven week camp season.  Through group texts, emails and phone calls, mothers can almost pinpoint the exact roster of kids who will cohabitate with their offspring for a little more than a month and a half.  Lists are hastily compiled on Post It notes, on the backs of junk mail, and sometimes, using advanced Excel spreadsheets to enhance a parent’s quantitative analysis of the composition of the bunk makeup.

For these mothers there are no two bigger days on the entire calendar than a day in early to mid June when bunk assignments are announced and a day in late August when parents learn who their children’s teachers will be for the upcoming school year.  The school year, a grueling ten-month marathon of homework, carpooling, and procrastination can be navigated in a much calmer and peaceful manner depending on a child’s teacher.  But this means very little to these parents.  

“This year Allysyn had a horrible teacher, what’s her name, who assigned a ton of homework for no good reason.  I was asked early in the year if I wanted to switch her into a different class but I was already filling out my bunk request essay that afternoon and totally blanked on calling back,” explained Jenni Goldstock, 43, of Manalapan, NJ.  “My focus on that time was that even though camp didn’t start for nine plus months, I wanted to express to the directors which campers should be in her bunk so she can have the perfect summer.”

To those uneducated about the compilation process, the similarities between the bunk and teacher announcements may look obvious but that’s not always the case.  With a plethora of different names based on religion, ethnicity, etc, a school roster may be created with relative ease as each student’s name represents a unique individual.   However, as lists are compiled for a certain boy’s bunk though, there may be six or seven Jakes, Jacks, Jonathans, Joshuas or Davids so it may be tough to discern which one is which since most have names starting with “Gold” and “Rosen” and end with any variation of “owitz”, “berg” or “stein”.  This can prove very confusing in this age of text messaging and spell checking.  

“Last summer, based on my spreadsheet algorithm, my Jake was so excited to be in the same bunk with Jake Goldstein from Montville (Jake Goldstein from Syosset was already known to be in a different bunk) who’s a fantastic kid but he ended up with Jack Goldberg who’s not so much,” lamented Shelly Rosenberg of Larchmont, NY who sends her child to Camp Huron Lake.  Rosenberg received Jake’s bunk assignment this morning and was overcome with excitement about his placement in Bunk 29.  Husband Dan was perplexed. “She’s screaming like a lunatic ‘JAKE’S IN BUNK 29!! JAKE’S IN BUNK 29!!’ so I ask her who else is and she says, ‘I have no idea.’”  Shelly then ran straight down to the family computer to print out return address labels denoting Jake’s new bunk.

Area Mother Just Purchased Labeldaddy Labels to Stop Losing Her Children’s Clothing and Accessories

Livingston, NJ (March 25) – Area mother, Jennifer Goldstein, 42, just seconds ago purchased Labels from Labeldaddy to stop losing her children’s clothing and, more importantly, accessories.  Apparently not too embarrassed to let all of her friends and acquaintances on Facebook know that she is constantly losing her children’s clothing and accessories, Mrs. Weinberg bragged about her $50 purchase to all her friends who haven’t already blocked her account.  She made it abundantly clear through her post that she, not her children, was the one losing the clothing and accessories.

For years, Goldstein, mother of an 11 year-old boy, Jake, and a 9 year-old girl, Madysyn, has continually lost her kids’ clothing and accessories at an alarming rate.  Last year alone, she lost over $17,000 worth of clothing and accessories just within her home.  Under Armor sweatshirts, NFL Jerseys, Sugar Lips tanks and Flowers by Zoe airbrushed t-shirts and hundreds of other items (and accessories) have “mysteriously disappeared” since none of these were ever properly labeled.  But now that she has purchased the “Deluxe Pack” from Labeldaddy all of her troubles losing her children’s clothing and accessories will soon be a thing of the past.

“I’ll clean the kids’ clothes and accessories and leave it in the laundry basket to put away right after I get home from the gym and lunch.  When I get back I sometimes forget what I did with the clothes and accessories and never find them again. They’re just gone,” explained a frustrated Goldstein.  “I truly believe with these labels on the clothing and accessories, I’ll be able to locate the clothing and be able to identify exactly who it belongs to.”

The new labels have arrived just in time for Goldstein as she normally packs her children’s camp duffel bags in early April.  The past few summers she’s used a Sharpie and iron-on labels for her children’s clothing and accessories but these methods provided little to deter the loss of said children’s clothing and accessories.  Duffel bags full of brand new overly expensive camp clothing have come back nearly empty in the past.  One theory is that Jake, an Inter camper at Camp Huron Lake, has two other Jake Goldsteins in his bunk who claim his clothing and accessories as their own while Madysyn shares the same name with one other bunkmate who spells her name with two middle y’s, “Madyysyn”, which still confuses much of the foreign camp staff as to which clothing belongs to whom.   

Merrick, Long Island’s Melissa Goldstein, mother to one of the other Jake Goldsteins, was not too happy about Jennifer’s braggadocious Facebook positng.  “I’ve been sending my Jake with crap from Target and Walmart and some Kirkland brand clothes every summer and he comes home with a ton of great new stuff.  I’m going to have to find out what color and logo she got for her son’s labels, and I’ll order the same.  I figure a $50 investment in labels is worth a few grand in clothing and of course, accessories, every summer.”

Carroll Supposedly Had Patriots 8, Seahawks 4 in Office Box Pool

Glendale, AZ (Feb 1, 2015) – It was an ending for the ages in Super Bowl lore.  With three shots from the goal line with less than thirty seconds left down by four points, the Seattle Seahawks were on the verge of winning back to back Championships. The makings of a dynasty were a mere 36 inches away.  With a running back nicknamed “Beast Mode” who had punished the New England Patriots defense for the past three hours getting ready to cement his MVP performance with a game winning touchdown, Seattle head coach Pete Carroll opted to dial up a pass play in a crowded sea of defenders.  The second seldom used cornerback Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson’s pass, Carroll felt a huge wave of euphoria. 

Carroll would have to explain himself to his team, the media, and millions of Seahawks fans around the world.  “Yes, I’m disappointed we lost the game but we do a boxes pool in the office and I had Patriots 8, Seahawks 4.  Last year I lost to this bitch Phyllis from marketing and this year she already won $25 for the halftime score and her other boxes were Patriots 8, Seahawks 1.  There was no way she was going to be able to rub in another $75 win in my face for the next year.” 

“I thought about kicking a quick field goal to make it 28-27 then go for an onside kick, hopefully recover, then throw a Hail Mary, kick the extra point to make it 34-28 so I would still win the pool,” Carroll lamented. 

Home Depot, Lowes Sold Out of 3/8 Inch Hex Nuts as Hanukkah Arrives

East Hanover, NJ (Dec 17, 2014) – Big box hardware behemoths, Home Depot and Lowes, have once again completely sold out their entire supplies of 3/8 inch hex nuts for the 31^st consecutive December.  The shortage of these hardware staples, around since 1568, seems to coincide each year with Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights.  Industry analysts have been puzzled for decades as to what the correlation is between the holiday and the shortage.

“I’ve been an exec at Home Depot for twenty years and I still can’t figure it out,” laments John McConnell, Senior Sales Executive and Notre Dame Graduate, of Greenwich, Connecticut.  “Some years the run on hex nuts begins in early December, some years it’s the middle of the month.  Last year it was right after Thanksgiving.  Never the exact same time.  I’ve been studying my “Great Churches of the World” desk calendar for months and just don’t see anything on it that would cause this.”

Carpenters, handymen, and craftspeople around metropolitan hubs New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have been struggling to find hex nuts to go with the hundreds of thousands of bolts and washers they use on a daily basis.  Local artisan, William Petricelli of Roseland, has created dozens of hand-crafted custom wooden rockers to be shipped to customers in time for Christmas.  Unfortunately for his clients, Petricelli cannot complete any of his items without properly securing the pieces together.  “I’ve tried all kinds of glues, tapes, nails but nothing works for me like the nut and bolt combination.  Without the nut, the bolt is pretty useless.   It’s like peanut butter without the jelly,” a disheartened and frustrated Petricelli explained. 

While a myriad of professionals struggle to make deadlines and complete projects, thousands of Jewish children around the country are creating horribly constructed, overly glittered, personalized menorahs to the dismay of their parents.  Usually starting with a piece of scrap wood or a simple tongue depressor, the children use ten bolts as candle holders, eight representing the nights of Hanukkah and two stacked together for the Shamash or “middle candle”.  Rarely are these menorahs true works of art as the children, ages 2-6, usually put on an overabundance of glue to each nut which results in it sliding out of line with the other nuts.  Before the glue even has a chance to dry, the little girls typically pour on a half to three quarters of a jar of glitter while boys tend to over-marker their projects by starting with a few bright colors which eventually blend with the glue to meld into a dark brownish tint.

When these “precious works of art” come home with the budding Marc Chagalls, parents enthusiastically overreact to the “beauty” of these atrocious monstrosities.  Livingston real estate agent, Jon Lieberman, 37, recently was gifted a menorah by his six year-old son, Jake.  “When I came home from work it was there on the kitchen island.  It honestly scared me.  It looked like a dead animal.  My wife said it’s our new menorah that Jake made.  As I hugged him, telling him how much I loved his work, I mouthed to my wife ‘It’s disgusting, no?’  She looked at me in tears and sobbed ’Our son is a no talent hack.’”