…The very first day I realized that this horseback riding camp was not for me. The two old German ladies who ran the camp would shout at all of us in German while we were riding the horses. I was kind of a sensitive type who didn’t like being yelled at. Call me prissy too, because I was horrified when each morning one of the German women who ran the camp would scrape all of our leftovers from our plates onto hers and eat them. Cold, chewed up fried eggs, scraped off the plate and eaten. Yuck.

After a couple of days there I had lost so much weight, and I didn’t have much to lose. My parents decided to take me home with them, as they had been there to see how it went the first couple of days. I felt like I was escaping a prison camp…

From my latest book, The Mumachen.