SHAMWOW: June 2009

Camp is going freakin' fantastic. This week I had a scoutmaster come down to the archery range and watch me teach class. Scoutmasters go down to merit badge classes sometimes, and it always makes the staff nervous because you don't know if they're going to write a review about you, or make negative comments about you, or go to your boss and shout shit about you (that guy was a fucking dick). This scoutmaster came down and watched the kids shoot for a while. He pulled me aside at one point and said, "You are doing a fantastic job, keep it up." It made me very very happy.

At the end of every week, the scouts fill out anonymous surveys about their time at camp. The staff can read these. Everyone always gathers in a circle and jumps to the "Favorite Staff Member" and "Least Favorite Staff Member" questions. Today I walk into the admin, and Oopie Doopie is laughing and calls me over. He shows me a review he's holding:

Least Favorite Staff Member:
Jason, because he's a dick

I don't really know how to describe the way I felt about it. I was very confused because it takes a lot for me to lose my temper, and I've never been mean to any scout. At the same time, I laughed my ass off, because it was just so direct, and didn't give any particular reason why I'm such a gigantic dick. But aside from this negative review, and another one which said "because he's mean," I also got about five or six positives. One said "because he actually made archery cool." Another said, "because he always had a smile on his face." Another said, "because I wasn't that good, but he kept trying and never gave up on me." Fuck, am I awesome or what.

Two weeks ago, we had a scout born with some sort of musculoskeletal defect in his arms. It didn't prevent him from using his arms, they were just twisted and misshapen. And he was really freakin' good with them, too. I heard he simply used his elbows to climb the climbing tower. Anyway, he came down to archery open shoot one night with his friends. I felt like shit because he was just standing back watching his friends shoot, and christ if you should have just seen his face. Well, I told him to come in. I held the bow for him, and he pulled back on the string and fired a few shots. He didn't hit anything, but he still seemed happy. It was very stupid and very dangerous, and could probably get me fired, but come on man, anybody would have done the same thing.

We have a girl from Germany on staff as part of some foreign exchange thingy, and she's extremely cool. Conversations with her are the best. We go "In America, we're all [this], [this], and [this]," and then she goes "In Germany, we're all [this], [this], and [this]" and it's so freakin' interesting learning about another country from someone who actually lives in it. Did you know the drinking age over there is 16, and guns are completely banned? Jesus, dude. She's also cursed by being quite attractive. It's not necessarily a good thing being hot and foreign around little boys who are experiencing certain feelings for the first time. I have no clue how the girls on staff put up with those little bastards.

I'm making most of the staff mad at me by explaining that shooting stars don't grant wishes. Everyone acknowledges that the wishes won't come true, but the fact that they know this and yet still continue to do it confuses the hell out of me. They can call me "boring," or "no fun" all they like, but both of those facts are irrelevant, as neither proves that the earth's atmosphere can give a rock magical powers. I'm really only making a big deal out of it because their reactions are funny as hell. Tyler joins in on it too, it's very fun. We're blasphemers. Megan totally reads this blog, hi Megan, are you having fun with your shooting stars?

There's no camp next week for the fourth of July, which is something they've never done before. We have a low turnout of scouts this year, probably because of the recession, so we're very low on funds. I guess keeping next week open would have put the money in the red. After we come back from our break, they're going to have to lay some people off because there won't be many scouts at all. The first week of the summer, we had close to 200 scouts in camp. The last week, we'll have less than 30. Most of the people getting canned are probably just going to stay as volunteers, because seriously, this job is really fucking sweet. I'm pretty sure nobody is even there for the scouts. The thought of goofing off at night is the only thing that gets us through the day.

I've been out of contact with the outside world for three weeks, and it was driving me nuts. I only knew of what was going on in Iran from the pictures and text messages my brother was sending me. Earlier this week he sent me, "CNN is saying Michael Jackson is dead." And apparently some governor went to Argentina and had sex with someone. Iran? Iran who? Oh yeah, Michael Jackson.