Today at camp.

summer for anyone else on the planet usually means two things. The two being, lots of rest and relaxation, maybe a few trips to Cancun or Florida, even dirty Jersey counts as a nice summer escape to some people. For me however, summer usually comes with great responsibility. I have a summer job at a day camp five days a week, and weekends are spent doing summer college classes. It's not that i hate summer, I love hanging out in the sun all day, although in order to do that it means look after 15 rugrats scurrying about, and i still don't have as much stuff to do like i usually do.
Anyways, there is a point to this blog. Today i got up at eight in the morning, showered moisturized, exfoliated, brushed my teeth and all the other mundane tasks it takes me to look good in the morning (it is quite a load of work to pull off looking normal as opposed to a troll like i would normally.)  Work starts at roughly 9:30 and by then i have gotten at lease 30 "i'm bored"s from Katy or 45 different "where is Trevor" from Mary. Along with lots of misbehaving and arguing from the baseball cap crew, our most favorite campers (i say that with the utmost sarcasm) I don't hate my job, in fact it is cool to become the disciplinary for awhile, although it sucks when kids don't behave. You have the cheaters, the runners, the bullies, and even the eaters/biters (one girl took an entire glob of sunblock in her mouth.) and right smack dab in the middle are the good kids, the few that are at camp. I can deal with almost all of them, but the one thing that makes me sick to my stomach is bullying. I guess it just brings me back to all the times i was called names in school and makes me realize i can stop it somehow. Most of the kids i identify with are the kids who are lowest in the peeking order. Never the less, i noticed something today that made me smile. One kid, named Zach. Zach had often been picked on. He wasn't gross or weird, and he made a lot of friends at camp. What these kids made fun of him for was for something very different. What is different with Zach is that all of his friends are girls in a time where most boys and girls separate according to developmental psychology. usually at this age the boys and girls are identifying more with each other and wanting to spend the most time with each other then other sexes. Zach, however finds that he identifies with the girls at camp more than the boys. of course there is nothing wrong with that, and i have never really given it much though until today when he showed me fingers and toes.
"they're painted. my friend did them....I'm really special." he said with a big grin on his face. some of the counselors joined in at looking at his fingers and toes. a few asked why he did it.
"it was just fun i like it." this made me smile. It is not that i think he has any type of gender issues, i think if he is just being a kid and doing what he pleases, but it was nice to see that in an area full of sharks who will snap at the sight of any slight difference, there are some kids just doing what makes them happy regardless. Perhaps it was stupid to take something bigger out of a little nail polish, but i remember when i was in that very same camp as a child. They pushed me with all the older kids at a young age because my cousin was older. The girls all made fun of me and mocked me because i hadn't started shaving my legs, calling me gross among other names. it hurt me so bad i begged my parents to start shaving at just 10 years old. it may seem outlandish to make such a big deal over it, but it just made the rest of the day seem better.