Camp is coming!

Less than three weeks to go before camp starts. The excitement of that beginning almost overtakes the excitement of this school year ending. It is quite a balancing act to maintain both levels and finish strong at school while adequately preparing for camp. A big part is memories of camp.

Camp is a kind of bizarre phenomenon in my life. Most people think it singles me out as truly odd. I think the list of things making me odd is much stranger and complicated than that and if you think camp is what puts me over the top you are not paying attention. Let me explain how I got involved in camp.

About seven years ago, when I lived in Florida, I found that while I needed the break from teaching, I couldn't do nothing all summer break long. I just needed to do something. Also, Florida teachers get their salary for the summer in a lump sum at the beginning of the summer and I imagine money might get tight. So I took a job as an office aid for a YMCA for the summer. The YMCA ran backyard summer camp programs for six weeks each summer and needed an extra person to answer phones and help deal with issues created by the extra workload for the week before, the six weeks of and the week after. It was easy 9 to 4 work, in air-conditioning and I could read and work on other projects if there was nothing else I needed to do. The first summer, on my first day, they fired the office manager for something and with the exception of deposits I took over her job for the summer. The next summer they called me and I came back and did it again even though they had a new office manager. I liked it. It was fun, simple, and while it gave me purpose was not too stressful. Also, apparently I was good at putting out fires, fixing sudden problems and organizing things.

Then I moved here and had no summer plans. Except the school I was working at had a guy (whom I became friends with) that worked at a boy scout summer camp. He had worked there for the past ten years and really loved it. Now, the people that worked for this summer camp lived there, but other than that, it sounded like a neat opportunity. One Saturday in October I went up there with him for the weekend and fell in love with the mountain. It was like being in the palm of God's hand in a physical, visceral way. So I applied for their office aid position.

The camp had traditionally staffed that position with 16 year old boys and referred to the position as the office monkey. On the day of the interview I said, "Considering my age, education, size and maturity, could I be referred to as the office ape instead of monkey. It sounds much more evolved." They hired me on the spot. That first summer I made the office aid into the office manager and turned the office around. It was fun, but a lot of work and I became fascinated with the people I met, the stories and of course the love affair with the landscape and mountain air continued. The interesting thing was that I spent almost as much time assisting the medic as I did my own job. He was a nice guy, though a bit odd, he was just a little distracted by his ex-girlfriend that was at camp and who he was still seeing behind the back of his current girlfriend who wasn't at camp and the ex-girlfriend that was having his baby.

The point was, I seemed to have a knack for the medic thing. So I decided to go to night school and become an EMT. Turns out I was decent at that too and I really liked it. Three quarters later I had my national certification. That next summer I became the camp medic (the other guy didn't come back) and this summer will be my third summer at that post. I figure I'll do this summer and then one more and then I may need to move on the other things, like PhD's. Anyway. So, when I go up to camp I will be able to share the off the wall stories of the weird ways kids injure themselves, try to rationalize home sick issues and the bizarre dramas that play out at camp. It should be interesting. Only 17 days to go until camp starts.

It's gonna be a beautiful summer.