That music was so loud I could feel it vibrating in my throat, and could swear my heartbeat changed its rhythm to keep the beat. I can’t even remember what the song was, but the band was a rather large group of boys from school, all of them trying their darndest to impress the cheerleaders, throwing winks and nods their way every so often. I remember most of all, that beautiful blond ponytail swinging to the beat as she danced on the arm of her beau, a pearly grin exposed beneath cherry lips, her eyes wild with excitement. The music sailed from the stage and wrapped around their bodies as they pranced effortlessly around the gymnasium floor. She soared through the air, skirt billowing about her oblivious body as she flew on his hands, folding herself around him this way and that. She steps on her partner’s toe, and her milky throat restrains a giggle as he cries out silently, his pain enveloped by music. She looks up at him, smiling apologetically, though there is laughter glimmering behind her eyes. She reaches out to take his reluctant arm, but the song concludes, her partner breathing a silent sigh of relief.
Was I jealous? Maybe... no, yes. I was jealous, but at this point, ignorant to those ugly feelings. I did know, however, that Marcia Price was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
A new song begins, this one much softer, and I take the arm of my beau, Rich. Rich was never much one for swing dancing, I think he was afraid of people poking fun at him, so we would always have to stick with the slower songs. We leisurely stepped to “blue moon”, though it wasn’t much fun; Rich was so tall I felt as if he would tip over like a brittle old tree and topple me any second, but I never told him this. My eyes were still on Marcia and Trevor, wondering how they could still dance so fluidly to something as slow as this. Their feet were in perfect harmony to each other’s movements, her hips swinging slowly to the beat, causing her skirt to wrap leisurely around her body as if it was dancing too. I felt as if I was dancing with a telephone pole, watching those two, but Rich was trying, so I couldn’t very well be cross with him for it. He always made a point of trying, though not so hard as to look foolish in any way, though I always felt foolish, especially now, dancing in that awkward little circle.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
camp
Sometimes I feel as if some of the crazy is wearing off on me too.
Day one was a blur. The entirety of those few hours seemed to be spinning in endless circles with no sign of night to come. A boy standing at least 6’5 on a busy beach yells out subway routes in New York City, layered between excited shrieks of campers and concerned cries of redundant counsellors. A smaller boy with empty eyes is told not to touch the girls, but to ask a question first, a bald boy yells angrily at his foot. The air seems heavy with desperation and looming sense of doom; a result of those unprepared despite the seemingly endless training for this day. Everyone is frantic, everyone yells, and everything spins until my head hits the pillow, and I am greeted by sweet blackness.
Morning. I realize with agony that this is not a dream, and I am not back in the safety of my bed. Can I handle this? The task is an ominous monster looming ahead, and it is going to fucking eat me.
Behind me, gentle snoring penetrates my vulnerable ears. In front of me, there are short halting words, slurred and difficult to decipher from each other. Something smells foul somewhere, and it seems as if any sort of privacy is nothing more than wishful thinking. Can’t I just retreat right now? The entirety of my being wants nothing more than to curl up in a hole somewhere and escape everything that is summer camp.
Breakfast. Everyone chomps merrily on slices of soggy toast, and artificial tasting eggs, excited for day one of the 7-week long summer, but I am still not much more than a deer stunned in the headlights of an oncoming collision. I can see myself crashing already, and anticipate the impact. I cringe.
The day hauls on forever. Period one, two, then lunch. Period three, four, then dinner. Period 5, evening activity, snack, bed. The day is structured into a variety of slots and margins. Everything has a time and a place. The structure relaxes me, surprisingly. I don’t have to focus on what’s going to happen next, as there are no surprises... ever. Our day runs like clockwork, and not only because of the camp-issued schedule. Every morning we wake our four girls at 7:45. Erin has had, so far, about a 96% chance of wetting the bed. Vicky will ask how you slept approximately 4 times between wake up and breakfast. When you ask her how she slept, she will reply that she, a) slept like a rock, b) slept like a log, or c) slept like a baby. Vicky will ask what is on her schedule for the day between 6 and 8 times before lunch, then 3 to 4 times before dinner. She already knows the answer to every question she asks, and looks so intently into your eyes when she asks, that it can easily cause one to become uncomfortable. Vicky is unblinking, and concentrated at these times, but she still remains nothing but a child trapped in the body of a 28 year old. Vicky really looks about 45 years old, and it is quite apparent that her mother buys Vicky’s clothing from the same place as her own. Her hair is cut into a sleek brown helmet atop her head, with the odd streak of gray penetrating through. She reminds me of a frog, sometimes.
__________________________________________________________________________________
It was surreal, being with campers in the outside world. It hadn’t occurred to me that, for these kids, life does exist outside of camp. There are real people, in a real world living real lives, and every single one of our campers would have to interact with at least some of them. At camp, we live in a bubble; in this bubble, everyone is understanding, and nice, and knows how to deal with all of our campers’ issues. The problem is that there is a life outside of the camp bubble. There is an actual test when they go home; hardly anyone in the world outside is even close to camp. Outside of camp, every one of our campers is the weird kid. Every camper is the “special kid” in class, the ones that other kids point at, the one who gets stares on the street, the one who gets beaten up; the one who has to live life as the odd one out. At camp, every camper is an odd one out. They don’t tease or poke fun, because they have all been on the receiving end of it. At the beach today, I heard the whispers, and I saw the stares. This is when I realized that when our kids go home, there will still be those people out there. We may have given them all of the poker chips we could during their stay, nevertheless there will still be those same people taking them away from them every single chance they get.
Today, I learned that we can’t fix the world. We just can’t. There are always going to be awful people out there. There is always going to be the class bully, there is always going to be the stares and whispers, and there will always be ignorant people.
Day one was a blur. The entirety of those few hours seemed to be spinning in endless circles with no sign of night to come. A boy standing at least 6’5 on a busy beach yells out subway routes in New York City, layered between excited shrieks of campers and concerned cries of redundant counsellors. A smaller boy with empty eyes is told not to touch the girls, but to ask a question first, a bald boy yells angrily at his foot. The air seems heavy with desperation and looming sense of doom; a result of those unprepared despite the seemingly endless training for this day. Everyone is frantic, everyone yells, and everything spins until my head hits the pillow, and I am greeted by sweet blackness.
Morning. I realize with agony that this is not a dream, and I am not back in the safety of my bed. Can I handle this? The task is an ominous monster looming ahead, and it is going to fucking eat me.
Behind me, gentle snoring penetrates my vulnerable ears. In front of me, there are short halting words, slurred and difficult to decipher from each other. Something smells foul somewhere, and it seems as if any sort of privacy is nothing more than wishful thinking. Can’t I just retreat right now? The entirety of my being wants nothing more than to curl up in a hole somewhere and escape everything that is summer camp.
Breakfast. Everyone chomps merrily on slices of soggy toast, and artificial tasting eggs, excited for day one of the 7-week long summer, but I am still not much more than a deer stunned in the headlights of an oncoming collision. I can see myself crashing already, and anticipate the impact. I cringe.
The day hauls on forever. Period one, two, then lunch. Period three, four, then dinner. Period 5, evening activity, snack, bed. The day is structured into a variety of slots and margins. Everything has a time and a place. The structure relaxes me, surprisingly. I don’t have to focus on what’s going to happen next, as there are no surprises... ever. Our day runs like clockwork, and not only because of the camp-issued schedule. Every morning we wake our four girls at 7:45. Erin has had, so far, about a 96% chance of wetting the bed. Vicky will ask how you slept approximately 4 times between wake up and breakfast. When you ask her how she slept, she will reply that she, a) slept like a rock, b) slept like a log, or c) slept like a baby. Vicky will ask what is on her schedule for the day between 6 and 8 times before lunch, then 3 to 4 times before dinner. She already knows the answer to every question she asks, and looks so intently into your eyes when she asks, that it can easily cause one to become uncomfortable. Vicky is unblinking, and concentrated at these times, but she still remains nothing but a child trapped in the body of a 28 year old. Vicky really looks about 45 years old, and it is quite apparent that her mother buys Vicky’s clothing from the same place as her own. Her hair is cut into a sleek brown helmet atop her head, with the odd streak of gray penetrating through. She reminds me of a frog, sometimes.
__________________________________________________________________________________
It was surreal, being with campers in the outside world. It hadn’t occurred to me that, for these kids, life does exist outside of camp. There are real people, in a real world living real lives, and every single one of our campers would have to interact with at least some of them. At camp, we live in a bubble; in this bubble, everyone is understanding, and nice, and knows how to deal with all of our campers’ issues. The problem is that there is a life outside of the camp bubble. There is an actual test when they go home; hardly anyone in the world outside is even close to camp. Outside of camp, every one of our campers is the weird kid. Every camper is the “special kid” in class, the ones that other kids point at, the one who gets stares on the street, the one who gets beaten up; the one who has to live life as the odd one out. At camp, every camper is an odd one out. They don’t tease or poke fun, because they have all been on the receiving end of it. At the beach today, I heard the whispers, and I saw the stares. This is when I realized that when our kids go home, there will still be those people out there. We may have given them all of the poker chips we could during their stay, nevertheless there will still be those same people taking them away from them every single chance they get.
Today, I learned that we can’t fix the world. We just can’t. There are always going to be awful people out there. There is always going to be the class bully, there is always going to be the stares and whispers, and there will always be ignorant people.
old blog about reflection
Reflection is a word used by the religion teachers in my school as a method of obtaining something to mark without actually having to will themselves to create an actual assignment. "Write your own personal reflection about the movie we just saw, class. Oh, and be sure to include how it relates to God and your own relationship with Him in it. Now, I'm going to go smoke a joint behind the gymnasium, and wonder for the 1000th time how my life could have possibly become so pathetic while you're working on that. It's due at the end of the period"Okay, maybe that's not quite how it goes.So we work half-heartedly on said assignment, spewing out the same repetitive bullshit that we use for every piece of work in this, the class that even the educator knows is a waste of time that we could be learning useful things. Or smoking up with the teacher.So we write. We right about how God has a special place in our hearts, just like the movie's main character (who woulda' thunk it??) and how everyone should accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Of course, there is always the over achiever; you know, the one whom everyone loathes because they won't put down their hand and shut their gigantic orpheus's during lecture and simply try too hard for no good reason. This person will write a ten page essay about how much he or she loves the taste of the teacher's ass. He or she will often have obtuse and strict parental units who expect nothing lower than a 90% average, causing the over-achiever to rebel quietly; this rebellion is often obtained by teenage pregnancy (followed by abortion in some cases)a secret drug habit, or something else of the rebellious nature.And then of course we have the under-achiever. The polar opposite of said in the above paragraph. This person will either not hand in the assignment at all, or will hand in a ten page essay about how much they adore Satan. (The ten page essay will belong to the over-achieving under-achiever). This person frequently spends class time boasting about all of the drugs he has supposedly done, and all of the girls he has supposedly slept with. This plea for attention can often be misinterpreted by the teacher as a desperate cry for help, rather than what it truly is: the desperate cry for attention from some asshole with no friends. Take note that the over-achiever will have often gotten into more trouble than the under-achiever, who is all talk and no game.We then examine the whiner. This subject, often female, will do nothing but complain about how allegedly awful her life is, and will frequently attempt to tell the educator about said problems and have some sort of "special relationship" with them. Usually, the person in authority will have no part in this "friendship with student" business, but you will come across the odd sap who will do anything to win the approval of students, and take the bait. The whiner will often burden the class by sharing intimate details of her life, and again, complaining about how horrible her situation is. This person will write about how she can relate to the main character's situation, and how she hopes that God can help her too. Please excuse me for a moment while I vomit.And then we have the rest of us. The people who fly by under the radar, the people who will say only what is necessary to get a decent grade, and attempt to be invisible at all costs.Is this really what we have all become? Placed into categories like animals; that is, after all what we are, elaborate animals. I grow tired of this.
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