I spend a lot of time with children. Really, Stacy, we’re fascinated! Tell us more. Calm the hell down, I will. All I wanted growing up was for my mom to have another kid and bitch just wouldn’t cooperate. (Actually, she couldn’t cooperate but that’s something you can’t really explain to a 4-year-old who just wants a little sister to torture.) So I had to pursue kids on my own time. I started volunteering as a camp counselor when was 13. I was a Counselor-in-Training for a day camp in my town called Camp Wa-Tam. We sang a lot of songs, including an amazing little ditty to the tune of Friends in Low Places:
Blame it all on Hawkeye (our camp director; we all had camp names, mine was Scooby)
He’s not a clean guy
And showers are not his forte
We have not a hope
That he’ll ever find soap
But maybe he’ll spare us someday….
Oh, we’ve got friends at Camp Wa-Tam
Where the punch is strong (and by strong they meant revolting)
But Dad and Mom
Will stay and play
Cause it tastes okay
Well we’re not big on dirty faces
But we’ll sacrifice
In cer-tain cases
Oh, we’ve got friends
In grroooossss places!
Oh the memories. The summer after my first year of college, I moved back home and worked at a summer camp called “Splash Camp,” so named because it was owned by a local water park. I got the best tan of my life that summer. For some reason, the powers that be at the water park, and the campers' parents, deemed it suitable for three 18-19 year-olds to mind anywhere from 10-35 children from 11:00am-5:00pm every day. We didn’t have a supervisor. We didn’t have any life-saving skills of any kind. It was really kind of ridiculous and seriously fun. And the kids were amazing.
One such child, whose name I forget, was your classic precocious first born. He loved to talk about the fact that his mom was a lawyer and would settle disputes between other campers: “Stacy, in the case of my client vs. Kelly, I believe that really is my client’s towel and that Kelly likely has an identical Lilo and Stitch towel in her backpack. Your verdict?” So one day I said to him:
“You seem very interested in the law, do you want to be a lawyer when you grow up?”
“No, I want to be an OB/GYN.” Said the 7-year-old. Well, first you could have knocked me over with a Lilo and Stitch beach towel. Never in my life had I been so surprised by something a kid had said to me. Then of course came the questions.
“Stacy, what’s that? Stacy, what’s that? Stacy, what’s that?”
“Um….it’s a doctor that delivers babies.” I felt pretty satisfied with that answer, and hoped the kids would too. But, no, Smarty Pants McGee chimed in again.
“Well actually it’s a lot more than that…they have to do pre-natal exams and check for infections and cervical cancer and all sorts of stuff. I went to my mom’s appointments with her while she was pregnant with my baby brother." Um, ew!
"Stacy, what's he talking about?"
"Who wants Cheez-Its?”
Another time, we preparing the kids for pool time and getting ready to do the swim test. Kids who passed the swim test could swim anywhere in the pool, kids who did not had to stay in the shallow end. Kids who had serious problems with swimming were deemed "one-on-ones" meaning that one of us teenaged counselors with no lifeguard certification of any kind had to stay with them in the pool for the entire afternoon. Ashland (as in Oregon, as in the Shakespeare festival, as in his mom was a hippie), aged 5, was once such child. As I was getting into the pool with him, he said, “You don’t need to come with me, I can swim.”
“I know you can, I just want to play with you.”
“No you want to make sure I don’t drown. And I won’t. I can breathe under water.”
“Do you mean you can hold your breath?”
“No, I can breathe under water. Like a fish.”
Now I’m all for letting kids imagine and pretend, but I was a little worried that indulging this particular fantasy could end with someone drowning, so I tried to talk to him about the difference between holding one’s breath and actually breathing under water. I wasn’t getting through to him, so when his hippie mom came to get him that afternoon, I took her aside.
“I’m a little concerned about Ashland. He seems to believe that he can breathe underwater.”
“Oh, there's no reason to be concerned. He can.”
Hand to God, people. Who the hell teaches their kid stuff like that? If it was up to my parents, I’d still be wearing floaties in the pool, so afraid are they of my drowning. They forced me to take swim lessons until I was like 12, just to ensure that I would not meet my maker in some sort of aquatic emergency. But this woman apparently believed her son came equipped with gills.
I really could fill an entire book with all the funny stuff that has happened since I started working with kids, but I'm just way too lazy. I hope you enjoyed my penultimate post, and by all means, if you have a funny story involving kids and those darn things they say, send it my way: thessredd@gmail.com.
Blame it all on Hawkeye (our camp director; we all had camp names, mine was Scooby)
He’s not a clean guy
And showers are not his forte
We have not a hope
That he’ll ever find soap
But maybe he’ll spare us someday….
Oh, we’ve got friends at Camp Wa-Tam
Where the punch is strong (and by strong they meant revolting)
But Dad and Mom
Will stay and play
Cause it tastes okay
Well we’re not big on dirty faces
But we’ll sacrifice
In cer-tain cases
Oh, we’ve got friends
In grroooossss places!
Oh the memories. The summer after my first year of college, I moved back home and worked at a summer camp called “Splash Camp,” so named because it was owned by a local water park. I got the best tan of my life that summer. For some reason, the powers that be at the water park, and the campers' parents, deemed it suitable for three 18-19 year-olds to mind anywhere from 10-35 children from 11:00am-5:00pm every day. We didn’t have a supervisor. We didn’t have any life-saving skills of any kind. It was really kind of ridiculous and seriously fun. And the kids were amazing.
One such child, whose name I forget, was your classic precocious first born. He loved to talk about the fact that his mom was a lawyer and would settle disputes between other campers: “Stacy, in the case of my client vs. Kelly, I believe that really is my client’s towel and that Kelly likely has an identical Lilo and Stitch towel in her backpack. Your verdict?” So one day I said to him:
“You seem very interested in the law, do you want to be a lawyer when you grow up?”
“No, I want to be an OB/GYN.” Said the 7-year-old. Well, first you could have knocked me over with a Lilo and Stitch beach towel. Never in my life had I been so surprised by something a kid had said to me. Then of course came the questions.
“Stacy, what’s that? Stacy, what’s that? Stacy, what’s that?”
“Um….it’s a doctor that delivers babies.” I felt pretty satisfied with that answer, and hoped the kids would too. But, no, Smarty Pants McGee chimed in again.
“Well actually it’s a lot more than that…they have to do pre-natal exams and check for infections and cervical cancer and all sorts of stuff. I went to my mom’s appointments with her while she was pregnant with my baby brother." Um, ew!
"Stacy, what's he talking about?"
"Who wants Cheez-Its?”
Another time, we preparing the kids for pool time and getting ready to do the swim test. Kids who passed the swim test could swim anywhere in the pool, kids who did not had to stay in the shallow end. Kids who had serious problems with swimming were deemed "one-on-ones" meaning that one of us teenaged counselors with no lifeguard certification of any kind had to stay with them in the pool for the entire afternoon. Ashland (as in Oregon, as in the Shakespeare festival, as in his mom was a hippie), aged 5, was once such child. As I was getting into the pool with him, he said, “You don’t need to come with me, I can swim.”
“I know you can, I just want to play with you.”
“No you want to make sure I don’t drown. And I won’t. I can breathe under water.”
“Do you mean you can hold your breath?”
“No, I can breathe under water. Like a fish.”
Now I’m all for letting kids imagine and pretend, but I was a little worried that indulging this particular fantasy could end with someone drowning, so I tried to talk to him about the difference between holding one’s breath and actually breathing under water. I wasn’t getting through to him, so when his hippie mom came to get him that afternoon, I took her aside.
“I’m a little concerned about Ashland. He seems to believe that he can breathe underwater.”
“Oh, there's no reason to be concerned. He can.”
Hand to God, people. Who the hell teaches their kid stuff like that? If it was up to my parents, I’d still be wearing floaties in the pool, so afraid are they of my drowning. They forced me to take swim lessons until I was like 12, just to ensure that I would not meet my maker in some sort of aquatic emergency. But this woman apparently believed her son came equipped with gills.
I really could fill an entire book with all the funny stuff that has happened since I started working with kids, but I'm just way too lazy. I hope you enjoyed my penultimate post, and by all means, if you have a funny story involving kids and those darn things they say, send it my way: thessredd@gmail.com.
1 comment:
I worked as a lifeguard at a Summer Camp for a few summers myself. My fondest memory was mumbling the chorus to "Macarena" for the kids as they proceeded to walk down to the end of the diving board while doing the corresonding hand movements. At the end of the mumbling, they would jump into the pool. It was fun, but got old after about 30 times or so. As far as I can recall, none of them were equipped with gills or fins, but I cannt remember if I actually ever checked.
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