Stand By Your Camp....(sang like Tammy Wynette)

Whooosh.  Today is NOT the day for you to be putting down our Summer Camp program or to be putting your hand up in my camp counselor director's face.  Not the day at all.  It's been 6 months since I had a "real" Aunt Flo and she showed up yesterday, so I am not in the best of moods.  I am definitely not in the mood to deal with a parent who thinks their child does no wrong.   

It goes like this:  An 8 year old camper, we'll call him Gump, is playing with another camper, who we will call Lt. Dan.  Lietenant Dan gets the last chair in a game of musical chairs at camp today.  It happened to be the same chair that Gump was going for.  Gump wasn't happy and picked up a basketball and decided to humm it at Lietenant Dan's head, hitting the poor kid.  Lietenant Dan hops up and clocks Gump in the chin, they start rolling around and the counselors finally separate them (all of this is caught on video).  While they are sitting on the wall in a time out session, Gump decides that he will throw Jenga blocks and other balls at people, cause he's mad.  When our counselor attempted to talk to him about what he was doing, he looked her square in the face and "clonk" hit her directly between the eyes with a Jenga block.  Our counselor director had enough and decided to call Gump's dad to come pick him up. 

Speed forward 15 minutes (Gump is now in MY office), the Gump's Momma comes flying into my office, not pissed off because of her son's behavior, but because "there is no supervision at this camp, the kids run wild, there is cursing, they pick on each other, she has to force her kid to come to camp every day, the adults who work here don't care about what happens to the children."  All of this was said before I or the Counselor Director opened our mouths.  So,  when our director attempted to explain to her what happened, Momma put her hand up in the director's face and said, "I don't want to hear what you have to say about what supposedly happened.  I want to know what kind of punishment the other child received."

Okay, kudos to the counselor director for not immediately punching this woman square up in the vagina for the hand move alone.  My mouth literally fell open at that.  Then my eyes grew wide when she said that she didn't want to hear what happened.  I immediately knew that she was one of those parents whose child could do no wrong.  (If I had gotten a phone call to pick my child up for the reasons that we called his parents, I would have NEVER told another adult that I didn't want to hear what happened.  I would have wanted to know if the other child was reprimanded for fighting, but the fact that I received a phone call primarily about my child hitting a counselor would have far outweighed whether I was concerned about the discipline of the other child.)  And seriously, do you really think that if we went as far as to call you to pick him up, that he did NOTHING?  Okay, so if you really think that, let's get to the other question.  If this camp is so goddamn terrible, and is all of those things that you just stated, why, if you are such a great parent, do you continue to send your child here, and WHY, haven't you called to discuss with us, any of those things that you just stated?  As a parent myself, if I felt that way, or my children lead me to believe any of those things, I would have been on the phone or in the office of that camp asking questions and they wouldn't have waited until my child got in trouble at camp.  If you don't call to voice your concerns, then we don't know there is a problem and we can't correct it.  Trust me, we get phone calls about all kinds of stuff, we take it all seriously because these are your kids that we are looking out for. 

She told us and Gump not to worry, because he wouldn't be back.  Um, well, beings that tomorrow is the last day, well, I guess it really doesn't matter, but here, let me get his lunch money envelope and here's his bags so you don't have to worry about coming back to get those.  Oh, but wait.....what's this?  Gump is crying....hard...., "but, but, but....I don't wanna miss tomorrow.  It's the last day.  We get to sign our shirts.  We get waterslides.  We get hamburgers.  We get HOSED DOWN BY THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!!!".....(wait, I thought he was forced to come here every day, now he WANTS to come????)  Momma Gump says, "Why would you want to come back somewhere that you are treated so horribly and the adults don't even care?".....I'm thinking, "Well, yeah....exactly.  And it's nice to see how you speak about our counselors to your kid.  No wonder he totally doesn't respect them and feels okay about tossing a Jenga block in their faces."  Gump says, "Cause I have fun."  Wait, can he repeat that????  He's like, really crying ....loud, now.  "Okay, okay.  You can come to the last day."  she says.  Wait, what?  What the hell?  You are bringing your kid back to this god awful place?  You are willing to forceably make/ let your child attend the last day of this camp where none of us care about him.  Geez, Louise.....I'm confused.  Okay, so now he's coming back tomorrow, but please, here, go ahead and take his lunch envelope and belongings, just in case you change your mind again. 

Let me finish this by saying that this camp isn't perfect.  Not by long shot.  It has almost 200 children here from ages 6-12, from ALL walks of life.  Families on the wealthy side, families on government aide...all walks of life.  There are times where we have fights between kids, there are cursewords that are said, there is typical child like mischieviousness.  And it's all dealt with accordingly.  But there is also a lot of good done here.  Kids that may not get a lot of attention at home, leave here feeling loved.  Kids who are misunderstood, finally have someone who took the time to talk to them instead of just assuming that they are bad.  Pardon me if I get very defensive when a parent comes in here, because we had to call them in due to their child's behavior, slinging accusations.  I love this camp.  I love these kids.  Okay, I love most of these kids.  They are amazing.  Even the ones who are troublesome  are wonderful.  You have to look at it from different angles and figure out why they are like that.  Our counselors love these kids.  Do they get tired of them at times, yes, but they still do a great job.  Campers who come back every year, make me believe that this is so.  Don't you dare try to come in here and bad mouth them because you have let your child get away with crap at home that he can't get away with here.  Get it?  Got it?  Good.