turmoil

My life, as usual, is like living in the midst of a tornado. Up until today, whenever anyone asked, I'd say "yup, everything's crazy, but work is good." And now, sweet readers, work is about to become very very bad. However, I'm not yet at liberty to discuss the root of this, so I will instead turn to a reminiscence from the past.

One of my co-workers has just returned from her summer as a camp counselor, which reminded me of my one and only camp summer.

During the week-long training, the camp director had us take turns acting out scenarios where we would be presented with a problem and have to act out either the kid or counselor part. The problems were some you might imagine, like the kid is homesick or has thrown up or refuses to change his underwear. Others seemed a bit far fetched, like the one where the kid has been there all summer and never showered or gets her period for the first time or refuses to eat anything but sandwiches. I am here to tell you that each and every one of the scenarios we acted out occurred over the course of the summer.

I was one of those lax counselors, by which I mean that I let my kids get away with a lot because A. I am not a disciplinarian and B. who cares, as long as they're not hurting themselves/each other? This occasionally came back to bite me on my lazy butt. For instance, I made it a habit to buy the kids in my cabin a lot of candy whenever I got to escape to the real world. They'd give me a list and a wad of cash and I'd buy everything I could find. You're imagining wired children bouncing off the walls, I'm sure, but it's amazing how much sugar an 11 year old can consume and still need 10 hours of sleep. What they did do was to sit on my bed eating black jelly beans, which invariably found their way into my sheets. Bleh! There is nothing even close to waking up with black jelly beans stuck to one's nether regions.