8 Things You Will Deal With While Working at a Summer Camp

FINALLY!

Let me just start by saying that I love kids. My totally unattainable goal is for Andrew and I to become become Brangelina 2.0 and adopt/give birth to a bazillion kids and have a rainbow of adorable kids. That would be the total bombizzle (word, homie). Not only would I love them and teach them to be awesome, but I would also use them as free labour on my future hobby farm (chickens, goats and horses included).

Sidenote: Unfortunately, Andrew is against a full van of children. He thinks two kids is perfect, because he grew up with one brother and his childhood was awesome (i.e., one hit the other in the head with a golf club; they were clearly the best of friends).

Me, at 16, woking hard at summer camp.

But other people's kids can sometimes bring out a different reaction out of me...

Camp Counselors, or anyone else that has to deal with someone else's kid for more than 6 hours, should be given a raise. Cause kids are nasty. After some of the events I went through during my summers running camps, it's a complete miracle that I haven't sterelized myself.

So here are some of my experiences/lessons from the 6 years that I worked with kids. If you have also worked with kids for any length of time, you totally know what I'm talking about.

• You will quickly learn that kids under the age of 10 do not understand sarcasm. At all. While in the craft room, a child once asked me if I had a bowl. I naturally replied "Of course I do! I always carry one in my back pocket in case of an emergency!" She stood there expectantly, waiting for me to pull out a giant mixing bowl out of my Mary Poppins jean pocket. Sarcasm was never again used on a child.
• And it's not just the kids: you will inevitably have that one mom that brings her kid in with an entire lunchbox of over-the-counter and prescription medication. This kid takes so many drugs in a day that they put your local stoner to shame.
• Some of you are probably like "Hey, aren't you kinda being a humongous hypocrite, you crazy hypochondriac?!", so I should point out that I don't usually take any medication like some hypochondriacs, I just constantly worry that I have some osbcure and uncurable disease. I'm a hypochondriac au naturel.
• No matter how much flat ginger ale and quiet relaxing time you give them, the chances are, you will eventually get a kid that throws up. And chances are also that it will be a projectile vomit. All over the other kids' shoes and backpacks.
• You will get a child called Jessica who demands to be called Madison Butterfly Butterfly.



"Oh God, it's like a crime scene in there!"

• You will have to wipe blood off of random surfaces, because kids either: a) panic when they get hurt and run around, dripping the stuff everywhere, b) don't notice that their arm/leg/nose is gushing blood, or c) they don't give a damn.
• As bad as cleaning off blood makes you feel, having to climb up a dark tube slide to clean it is 1000 times worse.
• You will have to chase down a misbehaving child in a bouncy structure. No matter your size, wit and strength, they will make you look like a drunk panda.
• When the kids get picked up, you'll be talking to an older father in a business suit and realize he's giving you elevator eyes and hitting on you right in front of his kids.   
• And finally, I hope this will never happen to you, ever. But maybe, just maybe, if you have any of my luck, you'll be feeding the kids their lunch when a little boy will walk up to you and whisper in your ear "I think someone pooped in the sink." And no matter how hard you pray that this kid is just an extremely creative liar, lo and behold, there is actual shit in the sink.
• Sidenote: Interviewing each and every child to ask them if they're the one who "left something in the bathroom that you shouldn't have put there" will not yeild results.
• Second Sidenote: You can use your charm and pleading to convince another staff member to clean up the crap. You will owe them big time. Big time.

Now please give me your own horrible/gross experiences working with kids that will make me feel better about mine.