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counselor_steve
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Name: Steven
Country: United States
State: South Carolina
Metro: Sumter
Birthday: 2/5/1987
Gender: Male
Interests: Well, I am interested in not getting a criminal record out of this.
Expertise: Line-leading. Snack organizing. Dying inside.
Message: message me
AIM:  mrjackalope101
Member Since:
6/6/2005
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| Quote of the year, so far:
Background - Paten is an unbelievably wild little seven year old boy who posesses no self control whatsoever and scared of everything and throws rocks at the other kids while they sleep and I hate him. Zach is my boss. This took place during the overnight on Thursday night.
(entering the cabin where the little kids were sleeping; Zach approximated)
Zach: Guys, get to bed.
Walker: Mista Zach, what time is it?
Zach: 12:30, and that's why I need to go to sleep.
-in a creaky voice, pulling his tiny little head out of his sleeping bag so that you can only see it-
"12:30's when the rats come out."
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| Time flies, doesn't it? I think good old Bobby from last year summed up the theme of this year pretty quickly on the first day of camp when we were asking the kids to tell us what some of the camp rules were:
"No, umm, touching...
...yourself?"
Thank you Bobby for being the most annoying camper ever because you are exactly like I would have been there. Pompously smart, eternally confused, and prone to wandering off in his boring daydreams.
Camp's pretty odd this year. Ryan and Jen, the bosses last year, both quit, leaving Zach (the old head counselor) and Trey (counselor last year and recent Citadel grad) to put everything together. It's gone pretty damn well, I've gotta say, though I was somewhat startled by the sheer number of new counselors hired. A number of people came back from last year, all of them the good ones, which I was happy about. I really don't know the new guys well enough to comment on them, other than it's weird being one of the older people working there now.
As for campers, lotsa familiar faces, as I'm doing the 7-8 year old boys thing again. "Tractor" Trevor is back and better and dumber than ever, that poor little smiling fetus. I tutor him daily in reading because "we gotta get him in the second grade dammit." Dylan, another astonishingly small camper, is maintaining his status as the most lovable and violent camper at MacBoykin, having nearly dislocated my thumb today during an impromptu attack. Several others have popped their heads up, but I won't go into that.
More notable is an absence (so far): Carlos (of "teh baby" fame). As a sidenote, the last time anyone saw him was two weeks before camp let out last year. I remember it well: he came out to his mom's car, and in it was a friend he had from school. Loud noises were made and commotion was had, and he waved goodbye as the car drove off that Friday afternoon. Like a flash...he was gone.
And no one has replaced him, for now. You can't really, but none of the new "bad" kids are even remotely that interesting. There's Paton (pronounced pay-tun) who has crippling ADHD and is, incidently, the grandchild of my third-grade religion teacher. There's Austin, who I firmly believe is the only child I've ever met who could truly be considered evil. There's Tommy, who is six and knows what the middle finger means. And there's the one-two knockout combo of Raynor and Garrett, both of whom are obvious rednecks and throw punches nonstop. Fun.
It's slow right now. "Cute" things happen that I could write about, but I either forget them soon after or they just aren't that great if you don't know the kids.
One from today, though, involved a little "American Idol" thing we did, where we got whoever wanted to sing to get up on stage and belt out whatever they felt like. Trevor wandered up there somehow and told Mista Chris, who was doing the whole Ryan Seacrust thing, that he wanted to sing the Spongebob song. He mumbled into the mic a bit and wandered around the stage until Chris smartly popped in a CD that happened to have that theme song on it. Trevor proceded to sing along only to the children's chorus in the song (you know what I'm talking about) and let the pirate guy do the rest. He then ran back down to the group and I and excitedly gushed about his expectations:
"I wonder if I diy-ud good. They didunt teyll me if I diy-ud good and they didunt gimme a number mistr Steven I hope I did good I think I prolly got number 1 because that's my favorite song."
Trevor did not win. | | |
| Day 16 -
Keep it short. We had a bunch of new kids come in because Wilson
Hall decided to send it's first grade over for the week. The kids
are decent in general. One is annoying though. He's alergic
to fire ants and has to carry around his epi-pen, though he
doesn't. And he's super freaky to be around and makes weird
noises. And another is the son of the guy who signs my paychecks,
the CEO of the Y. Which is sorta intimidating. That kid got
some cool points lemme tell you. But he's a good kid anyway so he
mostly deserved them.
Carlos spit on Zack and thus wasn't allowed to swim. He kept
trying to go swimming though. So much so that he was carried away
from the water.
The best part of the day was the busride home. First, Carlos sat
in the front as usual. He was freaking out and playing with Moses
(who is now ironically one of my best kids). I eventually had to
calm him down so I handed him my backpack and told him it was a
baby. He latched onto it and hugged it and kept saying "baby baby
baby" over and over again. He named it. It is now Junior
Baby Easter (his last name is Easter). I then asked him about his
family. He has a 1yr sister named Leia and a 3yr one named
Shana. They live in NC. I think he made up his third sister
though. Her name is Wabba and she is 40. That's just a
hunch though. He spelt Wabba "A-D-N-K-Q-Y-B."
Suddenly Apple comes up to the front of the bus crying and holding his nose. He shows the other counselors it:
He has a fishook stuck inside of his nose.
We decided for liability reasons to wait til we got to the Y to remove
it. When asked, he says he found the fishook and someone told him
to stick it in his nose so he did. He is kinda dumb acting
always, but this sealed the deal. Amazing. We get back and
take care of buisiness. I get off at 5 this week so I'm off soon,
and that's the end of that. | | |
| Ok I've been super slack about updates, mostly because the initial fun
has worn off the job and my kids are really more annoyances than
anything anymore. The last entry left off during the second week
I think. That week really didn't pan out into much. Carlos
started to become apparently the most odd person in our group and the
rest faded into the background.
Third week had some interesting points. We hit 20 campers Monday,
but I got a new co-counselor: George. George is freaking
awesome. He has good taste in music, is funny, and is
pretty freaking helpful with the kids. And came in the nick of
time too, as Garry went to Winthrop orientation from Tues-Thurs.
Jason got suspended on Monday (for one freaking day) after he threw a
rock at a girl, told the kid next to him (Deuling) to not tell,
proceded to punch Dueling for telling, and then for shaking his head
vigorously for some reason. He also had to be wrestled away from
the dock at one point, but you had to see that to understand it.
So Tuesday was easy. Wednesday he came back and bent Apple's
finger backwards, so his parents were called and he was expelled
permanently. My week got so much more lovely.
At this point we realize that Carlos is the weirdest person ever.
He speaks in broken english, randomly yells out phrases like "mista
teven, whatchoo doin?" and takes up 100% of our time because he is
completely non-functional in everyday life. He decided to stay
the overnight much to my delight. A few samplings of
conversations:
At the bathrooms -
"Mista Teven ares still there?"
"Yes"
"Don't looka me"
"I won't"
"DON'T LEAVE COME BACK DON'T LOOKA ME"
"Carlos be quiet"
"Ut-up George"
Around camp:
"Carlos, what's your favorite animal?"
"Teh baby"
"Carlos, what's the strongest animal that has no legs?"
"A chair"
"Carlos, what's your favorite soda?"
"Animals"
"Carlos, who's your favorite counselor"
"Batman"
"What about Steven?"
"Oh-uh"
He runs away for some reason.
C: Mista Zack, I wan go wimming.
Z: Well I want a toilet made of gold.
C: What? (spoken as if he had just been called to come to something by someone else)
Z: No, that's not the right response to that.
Ryan banned him from sleepovers from this point forward.
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| Day 7 - Tuesday, June 14th
AKA day before payday.
It starts off easy enough. I get there when everyone is cleaning
up and getting in lines to get on the bus. But something is
amiss. I look over to Garry and he gives me this look. This
look...it is terror and sadness having a retarded lovechild. I
don't have to look around at all to know what's going down.
Jahson is back.
I spot him line moments later, and see his quite terrifying looking father (more on him later) walking out the entrance.
We get everyone on the buses, and at this count I have 16. Moses
was noticibly gone. As we're pulling off, I notice Jennifer
running out of the youth center doors rather quickly, flailing her arms
in the air for the buses to stop. As I'm in the front of the bus
(you can only sit back with the masses for so long), I step out to see
what's up, and lucky for me, my little buddy Moses has shown up!
So that means I've got him and Jahson on the bus, together. To
make it even better, they're friends from school and decide to sit next
to each other! Joy. Jahson sits next to Garry for most of
the trip, as I'm still dealing with Carlos, who's still the same as
yesterday. He sits next to me and repeatedly knocks over a broom
that's nearby.
We get to camp and into the cabin, all 17 lovable guys. Garry and
I keep up with the 'cool points' thing and issue a steady round of
about negative 10 to 20 for most of our guys for being buttheads.
We march to opening assembly where Bowling recites the YMCA mission in
front of the camp, making him the only person that receives positive
points for the entire day. He loses all of them about 20 minutes
later for throwing kitty litter while we were making hacky sacks,
making Jumping the leader for the day at, yes, +5 points! During
that activity, which is retardedly easy and took the other groups 15
minutes max (us, an hour) I think just about everyone went into the
negatives. Jahson, Alligator, and Apple had under negative 80,
making them complete ingrates in my book for not being able to show
even the slightest hints of self control.
Lunchtime. I give some cash and my order to Zach and he drives up
and picks us all up some actual cooked lunch. I'm lovin it.
Garry sang songs with the kids to occupy them (he's killer at that, and
most everything now that I think about it). Jahson, who chose not
to participate, instead lost any hope of swimming that day by telling
like 5 bold-faced lies in the span of 3 minutes. Seriously, I
asked him if he was touching Jen's computer, which his hand was on at
the time, and he told me he wasn't. I pointed to the computer,
asked him what it was and who it belonged to. He replied
correctly, with hand placed firmly on the moniter. I then again
asked him if he was touching it, he said no.
Breath in, breath out, breath in...
We go back to change for swimming. I have to again direct Carlos
in changing, step by step. Like, no joke, each sock
individually. Once he had on his swimming trunks, I told him to
put suntan lotion on, part by part. I, at one point, told him to
put it on his legs, and then sat up on a table in there to direct some
of the other campers. Then I feel something. I look down at
my leg and he's putting suntan lotion (like, nearly the entire bottle)
on my right leg. He rubs in it pretty thoroughly too. As
I'm slowly becoming oblivious to everything, I don't say anything to
him and let him continue. Hey, free sunscreen.
Capture the flag! Oh god who came up with this one. They
divided the camp into two teams and gave them some vague rules that no
one followed. Fantastic. Kwame' took the lead by capturing
his own flag and delivering it to the opponents for no real
reason. He's a special dude, in a stupid kinda way. Neither
team won because they both acted stupidly.
Swimming is inconsequential, and I had dry activity duty anyway.
Nothing happened really. I wrote up Jahson for spitting on
Alligator but who cares anymore?
Pack up! It took us like 35 minutes because my guys are having
trouble with concepts like lines and putting things inside
backpacks. Jahson is at this point somewhere in the negative 300
or so range with cool points. Moses and Kangaroo are getting down
there as well. Lovely.
Busride! Jahson punches a kid in the face. I have like 15
witnesses. I believe the moment of truth is soon to be upon us
people. Also, I wrote a letter to Apple's mom because she yells
at him for bringing home his towel dirty. We are at camp!
There is dirty everywhere! Parents... She's proven to be a
rather annoying one anyway, as has her kid. Oh well.
Funnily enough, he's one of my dad's students and he writes letters to
her often as well over incidents. Like father like weasel of a
son.
I wait around being a glorified babysitter for a while in the youth
center until Jahson's dad shows up. Garry and I are called to
come talk with him. In the entrance stands one of the sketchiest
men I've ever seen. Not to overtly stereotypically or anything,
but one of the most gangster guys I've seen in sumter. Slim,
muscular, snarling, tatooed, and MISSING A THUMB. Like not a
deformed hand missing a thumb. Like obviously cut/shot off or
something. Anyway, we explain to him everything that's been up
with his spawn lately. He just kinda seems like...well frankly
he's gonna hit that kid and we know it. I feel pretty bad yet
satisfied, evilly, for some reason. We then have a question for
him: what is Jahson's real name and how do you spell it.
Well, guys, it's Jason. Jahson (it's forever ingrained in me)
didn't know how to spell his own name, and apparently his mother didn't
either. His dad told us he was lying to our faces if he said
Jahson was his real name, but eh, I don't care at this point. I'm
super curious as to if I'll see him tomorrow.
And so another day more or less ends. Adios campers!
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