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When I was 15, I got a badly-paid summer job as a camp counsellor. I thought it would be a chill and easygoing way to spend my summer. That mistaken perception was laid to rest after the first few nights of anxiety dreams where crowds children would grab at me in the swimming pool and I was their lifeboat.
Every morning, I would gulp down my coffee and rush up the street to work at the Bloor JCC where, for some reason, it was seen as a good idea to get the kids all hyper with red kool aid and songs like:
"Father Abraham, had seven sons, dear, had seven sons had father abraham/ and they didn't laugh. And they didn't cry. All they did was walk like this..."
And the other song, which Rich mistakenly believes he wrote (OK, he actually improvised a verse) "God said to Noah, to build an Arkie Arkie...."
Strangely biblical. Anyhow, I would spazz out and the campers would LOVE it.
I spent all day with them, doing arts and crafts, running around, teaching them to swim, and ensuring that none of them choked on small objects.
Kids are awesome. You can be really stupid with youngsters, and they never check themselves, but keep pushing the game further until, inevitably, they whirl into a hyper frenzy, stop seeing you as a grownup, but rather a large and unbreakable friendly monster. the next thing you know, they are trying to drown you in the swimming pool. I still don't know how to get all hyper and then reign it in.
I am the opposite of hyper. I think I repressed it at an early age, because being hyper seemed inherently uncool and whenever I got all excited I would get spazzy and push boundaries and children and adults alike would mock me.
Now I wish I could summon up the hyper energy I had when I was a kid. I have no access to it, and this makes me mad. I don't care if it makes me look dorky. I want to celebrate life again, high on red kool aid, in large, uncool, suprememly spazzy way.
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11.25.2003
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