its times like these i wish i had a remote control for the time zone

when i was sixteen, i was a counselor at brooks day camp in north andover. for forty hours every week, for eight weeks, my co-counselor and i tried to keep our group of twenty or so nine- and ten-year-olds quiet, happy, in line, and out of trouble. despite the fact that every activity we escorted the campers to was run by its respective staff member(s), the group counselors were occasionally asked to help out. this was particularly true when it came to boating, as the campers weren't allowed to be out on the lake unless they were accompanied by a counselor or CIT. now, there were at least eight boating counselors, hired for the explicit purpose of padding and/or rowing themselves and the campers merrily around lake cochichewick, day in and day out. in addition, there were two CITs whose sole responsibility was to assist the boating staff in facilitating their ostensible goal of introducing each and every camper to the joys of maritime activities. regardless of this fact, for one reason or another [the most frequently observed reasons being the propensity of certain members of the boating staff to either [1] laze about on the docks, gossiping, sunning themselves, listening to queen's greatest hits on a boombox, and generally trying to resemble an abercrombie and fitch catalog, or [2] take off in the camp's one motorboat for all or most of a particular group's boating time, under the guise of 'ensuring waterfront safety'


i don't feel like finishing this. long story short, i had to take some bratty kids out in a canoe, despite my life-long aversion to boats (not to the boats themselves so much as the murky, cold, dark, dirty water in which they float... actually, not so much the water itself as the potential for being suddenly and unexpectedly submerged in it) and the fact that before that day, i had never set foot in a canoe in my life. there was this big rock in the middle of the lake, they begged me to let them get out and stand on it, and i did. then i left. straight up ditched them all, right there on the big stupid rock. i took the canoe and turned it around and started paddling towards shore. they laughed at first, but when i didn't turn back for them right away, they started getting nervous.

all i have to say is, those kids are lucky i have a conscience.. otherwise, they might still be on that rock today.

yeah.

that'll teach them to make me canoe.


that was my first and last summer as a camp counselor.

go figure.