Well, Charlie and I just returned from West River deaf camp. We were at opposite ends of the spectrum. He got Camper of the Week, and I got kicked out. Yup, you heard me right.....
He had an absolute blast there, and everybody loved him. One counselor even asked (seriously) if he could hire Charlie to tutor him in ASL by videophone! Whatever. They've been at it every day since we got home. All I heard all week was how unbelievable he was, what a good kid, how incredible that his sign was so fluent already, blah, blah, blah.
Well, that's what I heard when I wasn't hearing them yelling at me, anyway. I was co-director of the high school deaf camp, and we just couldn't seem to do anything right this week. We started off by busting a drug-dealing effort and sending home a roomful of 4 boys. This tainted the image of the entire high school camp in the eyes of all the other groups and their directors, so they carried a rather dim view of me and my co-director to start with. (No, we weren't considered heroes for busting the druggies--no good deed goes unpunished.) Then our kids got into a food fight.....
They were making gingerbread houses from a kit in teams. My co-director became much-beloved by standing up and telling them, "The rules are--NO RULES!" As those of you with older kids know, you just don't say that to a bunch of teen-agers (46 of them, to be exact, minus the 4 we sent home) without expecting dire consequences. It starts with one person who has sticky icing all over his hands touching another person on the nose, whereupon this person smears a line across the first guy's forehead, and the next thing you know you've got kids chasing kids, kids chasing counselors, counselors chasing kids, etc.
The counselors were up with the kids until 2 in the morning cleaning the dining hall.
Co-director and I got hauled on the carpet the next morning.
Then the girls and some counselors entered the boys' cabin while the boys were gone and turned all the furniture upside-down, stacked up the cushions, took some of it outside on the lawn....all a harmless prank, except for the fact that that camp manager had come to the cabin to deliver a message and was standing in the middle of the cabin looking around in amazement and glaring at me as I'm looking about in dazed confusion, having just awakened from a one-hour nap which came nowhere near to catching me up on my 16-hour sleep deficit. (I had been averaging just 2-3 hours per night since we'd gotten there.)
He says to me in a sing-songy voice, "Don't let it get out of haa-aand...." and walked out.
We had a counselor conference.
I got to bed at 11:30, determined to get some sleep this night. At midnight, co-director bursts into my room, giggling and shrieking, "We are SO gonna get kicked outta here...."
I turned my back on her and went back to sleep, knowing that whatever it was, we were going to be hauled on the carpet again in the morning.
Indeed. Seems a group of girls were talking about sneaking out and jumping off the pier for a swim at midnight, and a counselor "oversaw" them and convinced them if they were going to do it to at least take some counselors with them. So our girls and 4 counselors (one of whom was a certified lifeguard) went and jumped off the pier. Problem is, another camp director (someone who didn't care for me and my co-director to start with) saw them and blew the whistle on them, proceeded to have a loud argument with co-director, and then burst into the boys' cabin to awaken a sleeping male counselor and demand a head check, when the boys weren't even involved. (Can you believe this is a church camp? What a Peyton Place it turned out to be!)
Anyway, we did get berated for all of this the next day. They made it pretty clear we weren't welcome back.
Can't keep us down for too long, though. We're planning to start a new camp next year. It'll be for deaf people (maybe not just kids) with concomitant disabilities, both physical and mental. We figure this population is a lot less likely to sneak out in the middle of the night and jump off the pier. And the great part is that a number of our loyal counselors have said if we start something new, they want in, so we're already partially staffed.
How does Charlie fit into this? Not exactly sure yet. He doesn't have any other disability to go with his deafness, so he can't be one of the campers. He isn't old enough to be a CIT (counselor-in-training). I'm wondering if he can maybe be one of the one-on-one helpers. He is so patient that I think he'd be great at that, helping someone with a major disability to do crafts and activities that they normally wouldn't get a chance to do.
He had an absolute blast there, and everybody loved him. One counselor even asked (seriously) if he could hire Charlie to tutor him in ASL by videophone! Whatever. They've been at it every day since we got home. All I heard all week was how unbelievable he was, what a good kid, how incredible that his sign was so fluent already, blah, blah, blah.
Well, that's what I heard when I wasn't hearing them yelling at me, anyway. I was co-director of the high school deaf camp, and we just couldn't seem to do anything right this week. We started off by busting a drug-dealing effort and sending home a roomful of 4 boys. This tainted the image of the entire high school camp in the eyes of all the other groups and their directors, so they carried a rather dim view of me and my co-director to start with. (No, we weren't considered heroes for busting the druggies--no good deed goes unpunished.) Then our kids got into a food fight.....
They were making gingerbread houses from a kit in teams. My co-director became much-beloved by standing up and telling them, "The rules are--NO RULES!" As those of you with older kids know, you just don't say that to a bunch of teen-agers (46 of them, to be exact, minus the 4 we sent home) without expecting dire consequences. It starts with one person who has sticky icing all over his hands touching another person on the nose, whereupon this person smears a line across the first guy's forehead, and the next thing you know you've got kids chasing kids, kids chasing counselors, counselors chasing kids, etc.
The counselors were up with the kids until 2 in the morning cleaning the dining hall.
Co-director and I got hauled on the carpet the next morning.
Then the girls and some counselors entered the boys' cabin while the boys were gone and turned all the furniture upside-down, stacked up the cushions, took some of it outside on the lawn....all a harmless prank, except for the fact that that camp manager had come to the cabin to deliver a message and was standing in the middle of the cabin looking around in amazement and glaring at me as I'm looking about in dazed confusion, having just awakened from a one-hour nap which came nowhere near to catching me up on my 16-hour sleep deficit. (I had been averaging just 2-3 hours per night since we'd gotten there.)
He says to me in a sing-songy voice, "Don't let it get out of haa-aand...." and walked out.
We had a counselor conference.
I got to bed at 11:30, determined to get some sleep this night. At midnight, co-director bursts into my room, giggling and shrieking, "We are SO gonna get kicked outta here...."
I turned my back on her and went back to sleep, knowing that whatever it was, we were going to be hauled on the carpet again in the morning.
Indeed. Seems a group of girls were talking about sneaking out and jumping off the pier for a swim at midnight, and a counselor "oversaw" them and convinced them if they were going to do it to at least take some counselors with them. So our girls and 4 counselors (one of whom was a certified lifeguard) went and jumped off the pier. Problem is, another camp director (someone who didn't care for me and my co-director to start with) saw them and blew the whistle on them, proceeded to have a loud argument with co-director, and then burst into the boys' cabin to awaken a sleeping male counselor and demand a head check, when the boys weren't even involved. (Can you believe this is a church camp? What a Peyton Place it turned out to be!)
Anyway, we did get berated for all of this the next day. They made it pretty clear we weren't welcome back.
Can't keep us down for too long, though. We're planning to start a new camp next year. It'll be for deaf people (maybe not just kids) with concomitant disabilities, both physical and mental. We figure this population is a lot less likely to sneak out in the middle of the night and jump off the pier. And the great part is that a number of our loyal counselors have said if we start something new, they want in, so we're already partially staffed.
How does Charlie fit into this? Not exactly sure yet. He doesn't have any other disability to go with his deafness, so he can't be one of the campers. He isn't old enough to be a CIT (counselor-in-training). I'm wondering if he can maybe be one of the one-on-one helpers. He is so patient that I think he'd be great at that, helping someone with a major disability to do crafts and activities that they normally wouldn't get a chance to do.
