Short-a-Day: Jim Shepard's "Courtesy for Beginners"
Originally published in A Public Space, No. 4, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 80.Even though his story's set toward the start of the Vietnam War, Shepard so accurately describes camp (from the perspective of one who does not want to be there) that even though it's a blackly comic "Worst. Camp. Ever," it sends me back. Couple that with a somewhat depressed seventh-grader trying to simply fit in and not …