Camp!

Sorry I haven't posted in about a week. I haven't had much to write about and I'd been preparing for camp anyway.

This weekend I went to camp with the Orange County Foundation for Oncology Children and Families (OCF-OCF). If the name isn't enough of a hint, it's a group for children diagnosed with cancer and their families. What made this camp special was that this was my first time going as a staff member rather than a camper. I don't have the best of memories, but I don't think this experience was really all that different from when I was a camper, except maybe that four of us got a whole cabin to ourselves. We had been going to June and September family camp ince I was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1993 up until my sister and I hit high school and schedules started conflicting with band competitions and such. Before I knew it I was over 18 and no longer allowed to go as a camper, but I was too busy with school to go as a counselor. Now that I'm done with school I got my chance to go back.

I actually wasn't a cabin counselor. I helped out with the little ones too young to be in a cabin, the so-called "tiny tots." We'd have sessions of a couple hours where the parents could leave the kids with us and go do other activities. It was fun and the kids were really cute, but it got really exhausting. Not only was I pulling the girls around in the wagon and swinging them around at the Friday night dance, but I was also really straining to figure out what they were trying to tell me. You know how little three-year-old kids talk. Some of it I could just nod my head or respond "Oh yeah? Really? Wow!" to. Sometimes, however, they'd be asking me if I'd take them to go see the horsies, or asking if I wanted their juice box and it got a little frustrating as I tried to figure out what it was they wanted. My sister seems to think that I wouldn't survive as an actual cabin counselor: "What if a kid needs you for something important in the middle of the night?" She had the youngest girls cabin, so I guess she'd know, but we also have a kind of hostile relationship and she probably thinks I'm incompetent. If I had been in a cabin I would have had a couple of co-counselors to back me up and I could explain my hearing situation to the kids right from the start. I think I could handle it. The only way to find out would be to give it a try, right?

Anyway, I shared a cabin with the two ladies who have done "tiny tots" for the past couple of years and another patient who grew too old to be a camper anymore who was helping us out with the kids. We got it all to ourselves because the two youngest girls' age-brackets were combined into one cabin this camp. Each cabin sings a ditty before each meal, which is usually a version of a popular song with things about that particular cabin's day at camp mixed in. We never had to do any ditties at meals because our kids were too young, but we dressed them up for dinner, which was fun. I really had a hard time understanding the ditties this time around. I'd always had a little difficulty, but I couldn't even tell what most of them were about this time. Campfire was alright. I knew all but one of the songs they sang, and most of the skits involved a microphone, although I've always had a little trouble with those microphones. I was just hoping and praying that they wouldn't call me up during "chuggy chuggy" or the "elephant walk," which they didn't. Come to think of it, I don't think I'm very popular around there.

It's strange, but I feel like I'm only known by some people by association with my parents or family, even though I was the actual patient and the reason we started going to OCF camp. That could be due to my introversion or my hearing loss, I guess. I think my social status most everywhere is a combination of the two. I feel like if I hear and respond incorrectly to something once or twice, no matter where I am, I must get some sort of social stigma attached to me. I suppose that's why I never really bonded with my cabin-mates when I was younger, or perhaps it was a maturity level thing. My cabinmates would be outside flirting with the boys' cabin and playing whatever ridiculous pop songs were popular at the time, while I was inside having a quiet, mature conversation with one of my counselors. I guess maybe that was kind of weird, because the point of the camp is to forget about all your worries and just be a regular kid. Oh well. That was then. This is now, and I'm going to do the best I can with the gift of the present.

FYI: The photo in the corner is a couple of our kids. We dressed up as "101 Dalmations" for the "movie magic" dinner on Friday night.