A Day in the Life of Calvin

Today is Thursday, I woke up to my counselors and I was ready for another day of camp.

At breakfast, I saw one of the camp bibs and it had a fray. I do not like frays at all, so I proceeded to rip it off, ripping the entire bib in half. My counselors were not happy because there are not many of these in the camp. However, I still managed to rip one more on the way out of the dining hall.

Next, I made play dough out of salt and flour in art class. I had a lot of fun feeling it between my fingers.

We had a special lunch today; it was a barbeque that some of the camp sponsors provided. While in line, I saw that Brian had his hands full with two plates of food. This was the perfect time to strike. I noticed there was a tiny hole in his staff t-shirt, and I had been dying to take care of it. I quickly ripped it as much as I could before he could stop me, leaving a gaping hole in his shirt. I heard him talking to the director to arrange plans for a new shirt for next week.

During rest period, Brian took me to the bikes and we biked for about an hour straight. Next, I went on the paddleboats and pattled my cabin mates around the lake several times. Hopefully all of this exercise will cause me to sleep better at night because I have been waking up earlier than everyone else.

At night, we had the talent show. I sang “Who Let the Dogs Out” with the cabin while wearing face paint and hats that looked like dog ears made out of construction paper.

For my individual act, I got to perform my great talent of destroying boxes quickly. I had 30 seconds to destroy as many boxes as I could. I ripped as hard and as fast as I could and I was able to completely destroy six large cardboard boxes.

I also enjoyed Javelle and Seth’s rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” it was a tough act to follow.

Overall it was a great day and I did in fact sleep really good at night after such an active day at ITC. 

Water Days

Tuesday started off with music class, where we quickly discovered one of Calvin’s passions: water. Because it is sensory week, campers had the opportunity to play with different textures. Calvin took to the water right away and continually poured it in and out of a bucket with a cup. We used this activity to keep him busy during rest period as well.

Jordan made big strides today. He overcame his fear of eating in front of people and I was able to feed him. First, I started with applesauce, the only thing he would eat last year, and then I tried sloppy joe meat because it is similar texture. Finally, I worked my way up to solid food and he still ate it to my surprise.

I was a little disappointed in the evening activity. There were sponsors of Indian Trails at the camp so during a ceremony we were instructed to play with the kids on the bikes and with a parachute. We were definitely just putting on a show instead of acting how we normally do with the campers and I really did not like this.

On Wednesday morning, Seth arrived. Because he was three days late, he is staying until next Thursday in order to get his full week’s worth of camp. Once he arrived, we threw a bathing suit on him and went to the pool with everyone. Most of the cabin enjoyed it with the exception of AJ who just wanted Kyle to hold him, something he always loves to do.

It rained again on Wednesday but “big booms” (thunder) is one of Seth’s favorite things second only to Lady Gaga so it kept him in a good mood.

We played with Play Dough and Javelle thrusted it wildly across the table while slamming it as hard as he could. We thought Calvin may throw it everywhere but he actually had a good time with it, making about twenty yellow pancakes.

In the evening, we decorated totem poles. Obviously, we went with the sheepdog theme and did a big head at the top. We added paw prints that everyone helped paint and a collar. The finished poles are going to be displayed for several years around the camp so the Seneca Sheepdogs will be forever remembered. 

Seneca Welcomes Puppies

When I worked the Easter weekend at Indian Trails I thought I would never have an easier cabin; so far it seems this week’s cabin proved me wrong. Of course, it helps when three of the eight campers do not show up. One of these three is Cody, who had tubes put in his ears and will not be back this week.

With only five campers, and a week to rest, we are ready to begin another session of camp. This is a kids week, so all of our campers are very young. This is exceptionally strange because we have always had the oldest cabin in the past.

Alex was the first one to arrive. He was here before in another cabin and he is both helpful and well dressed. Today he wore a polo and nice new shoes.

We also have Calvin. It is his first time at camp and he seems excited to be here judging by his high pitched noises that he makes. Both Alex and Javell, another camper in our cabin, love to echo what they hear, meaning that when one of them makes a loud noise the other repeats it, causing the other to repeat it back. So far, we have found that the best way to stop this is to take on e of them away so they no longer have anything to repeat.

Seth and AJ...best friends

AJ is in our cabin as well, and he seems to be a favorite among the counselors. He is small, cute and loves hugs so it is obvious why he is well liked.

Finally, we have Jordan who is nervous about being at camp so far. Like other times when I have had Jordan in my cabin, he will not eat in large groups because he is too nervous.

On Monday, we did in fact gain another camper; Max, who was in our cabin for the first session, returned to Seneca. He really enjoyed camp the first time and he was on a waiting list. With all the cancelations, he was able to come back. So much for the very easy week, but oh well.

Alex continued to walk around with a brush in his hand all day, brushing his head often, despite the fact that he does not have any hair.

We also discovered that Calvin loves to break glass. First, he broke a bowl that was in our cabin by dropping it on the ground and then he did the same thing during breakfast with my coffee mug. Because of this, we told the kitchen staff to give us only paper plates for the rest of the week.

For the evening program, we played a game of “Eagle’s nest.” It was a lot like basketball but with only one basket. We teamed up with Algonquin, our brother cabin for the week, and the campers took turns shooting balls into the basket. 

The End of the Stretch

The last two days of the long three-week stretch passed quickly. On Friday, most of the cabin seemed out of energy. The campers were almost all there for three weeks straight, and I guess they were getting tired. The most obvious example of this was Abdul. He is always the loudest person at camp, whether it was yelling for his girl "ROHINA," or other campers "Happy Birthday Craaaaaaiiiiiggg," he said over and over on Craig Poe's birthday. Instead, he seemed exaused all day Friday and he did not even want to go to  the final council fire.

For the first time, I did not play the role of the archer at the council fire. Instead, I got to watch it happen and take a video of it. I will also add that the person who took my place did screw up the one line he had so I would say I showed him up.

Saturday was a bittersweet day. I was exausted, but at the same time it was sad to say goodbye to some of the campers that I knew would not be coming back. I was really thankful that most of the campers stayed in our cabin for the three week stretch because it allowed me to get to know them really well. It even go to the point where I did not laugh at every corny joke Lesley made, I was just that used to his personality. I also learned that no matter what, Bob will always be stubborn, so it is best to just laugh it off and let him do his own thing.

Chinese New Year

Wednesday was the first day that our cabin was the messiest one (or at least the first time on a day where they were checked). For this, we had to spin the “wheel of justice.”

Jason devouring his watermelon

Around and around it went, each space representing a different punishment. Slight hope held out for the “salvation” space dashed when it landed on “ITC makeover.” In the past, people have gotten in dresses and make-up for this, but we  found that all the dresses disappeared from the prop house. decided to take a cooler approach to this. Instead, I wore a red cape along with a large hat.

In the evening, we played a game called “world domination.” We teamed up with our sister cabin, Kickapoo this week, and formed on team, which we called “Pooca” (we took the last part of each cabin.)

As Pooca, we first had to hide an Easter egg in our territory. Next, we had to challenge two other cabins to a watermelon-eating contest. Two campers and a counselor from each team faced off. From our cabin, it was Jason and he was the first one done. Our three members won the contest, so we now had five minutes to search for their egg. We hid ours up in a tree, so I mostly looked there, and it was not long before someone else found the egg up in the big bell.

After we found the egg, we officially conquered this teams territory, so we now had to capture more. The other challenges were a large game of tic-tac-toe where campers got to be the pieces and a chant-designing contest. In the end, Pooca conquered all, meaning we won two nights in a row.

Josh’s dress clothes  had been taunting him the last few days. They are hanging up on his feeding tube right next to his bed and every time he lays in bed he just stares at them and smiles in anticipation for the dance. On Thursday, Josh did not have to wait any longer because it was finally time.

First, however, we had ropes in the morning. It was here that we finally came up with the theory that Bob is in fact a reptile. Instead of sitting in the shade by the swing, he went up the path and found a spot of sun to bake in while everyone else got ready to swing.

The dance had a Chinese New Year theme At the dance, almost everyone at the dance got what they wanted.

Bob got to sit by the speaker with his head down most of the night, even during a song called “Put your Head Up.” I tried dancing with him a little and it was too loud by the speaker to tell if he liked it or not.

Lesley got to sit at a table with all girls because there were no other spots by us. A girl counselor asked him if she was feeding her right and he replied, “You can feed me any way you want to.”

Josh also got to dance with a lot of girls, and he got to look good in his purple and grey dress clothes, spiked hair, and freshly shaved face.

As a whole, most of the campers once again looked like they were having a great time dancing all night. 

Cake Masters

When Chris left camp on Saturday, I was not sure who would be worthy to fill the empty void of the bed next to mine, but when Josh came back to Seneca on Sunday, I knew he would be a worthy camper.

 Seneca is running out of bed rails so I had to push Josh’s bed right next to Abdul’s so they can share the rail in the middle. Hopefully the two are good friends because they will be seeing a lot of each other even when they roll over at night.

Our cabin is quite similar to last week’s; Grandpa Greg switched cabins while Chris and Matt went home and we got three new campers. This includes Josh, who was in our cabin a few weeks ago and is still one of my favorites. We also have Jason, who was in my cabin for holiday camp. Jason is very high functioning and he loves everything about camp. Finally, we have Jeff, who I have never met before. So far, he seems easy to care for with the exception of his trouble swallowing; Jeff is the first camper I have had who needs his food pureed.

Monday started with some bangs. The first bang was Abdul running into the bathroom door, causing it to fall off the hinges. It also caused Josh to laugh for about five minutes even though he only heard it and did not actually see it happen. The other bangs were from thunder; it poured as we ran everyone up but the running did not help, we were soaked.

Thankfully, we had music in the morning so that activity was still on despite the rain. We thought boating would be canceled but when we woke up from a very successful nap the sun was shining and it was back on.

In the evening, we had a Rick Ruther concert. He has a Jimmy Buffet style and he played mostly older songs. The concert had a Cinco de Mayo theme to go along with the week’s theme, holiday week. Campers got virgin margaritas and other flavored drinks. I think I heard at least five campers who were disappointed in the lack of alcohol. Most of the campers wore leis as well, which I think is more Hawaiian than Mexican but I was not going to question it.  

Cody opened Tuesday morning with an announcement “Everyone, today we have a birthday…it is my birthday today so we will be singing ‘Happy Birthday.’” Cody has been planning his birthday for the last three weeks so this came as no surprise. Cody assigned me the task of making and designing a two-layer cake and he had other people on other duties.

By some miracle, the evening activity Tuesday was a cake decorating contest, so I told Cody that this was the cake I was making for him. In order to keep up the incredible amount of spirit our cabin has for our mascot, we chose to make our cake into a sheepdog head. First, we used white frosting then we had campers put black sprinkles around the edges to add a shaggy feeling to the dog. Next, we had campers put on a Fruit loop collar and dye marshmallows blue for the eyes.

One of the rules for the contest was that every cabin member had to be represented. We were wondering how to do this for awhile but then it came to us. Cody was adamant about adding dog poop to this cake, so we decided on eight chocolate piles of dog poop for the eight campers this week. This may seem like it was going too far to an outsider, but at this camp hardly an hour goes by without someone talking about poop so we were really just filling a quota.

Between our creativity with the poop, our cheerful presenting skills, and our high amount of camper involvement, we took first place in the contest. We were especially happy with this because there was some fierce competition out there between a well-done bumblebee cake and a castle complete with a moat. 

Boating with the Boys

Thursday was the day of the eagerly anticipated boat trip. For the older campers, it was a surprise trip to the Grand River ferry. I went on the trip to Crystal Lake in the Grand Haven area with the younger campers including Matt and Cody from our Cabin.

Sadly, Bob was still too sick to go on the trip. He said he felt fine, but his pale face and exhausted look said otherwise. I was later told he spent the day sitting in an even more slouched position than normal on the deck by the water to pretend he was on a boat. 

     
Instead of one of my own campers, I switched with another counselor and got to spend the day with Sha guan, an 8-year-old with Autism. He mostly repeats what you say, but he will answer some questions. I quickly discovered that he loved ice cream as “ice cream truck” was one of his most popular phrases.  He was sporting shorts and a cut off that were way too big for him because they were actually his counselors (all of his own clothes were dirty) so he looked pretty funny.

When we first got on the boat, Sha guan only wanted to sit inside at first, but we eventually were able to coax him into sitting in the back to look at the water.

After we were off the boat, we sang songs for the Coast Guard people who were there. This was Sha guan’s shining moment. He went to the middle of the circle and sang while constantly spinning in circles. After that, the Coast Guard showed us what they do. We went to the harbor and watched a  helicopter rescue demonstration

On Friday morning, we found out that all three of the counselors from another guy’s cabin were sick with the same stomach flu that Bob had. I helped them out in the morning and we ended up dividing their campers among the other cabins so they could rest. For us, we got Matt B, Bodie, and Danny, three more wheelchairs.
      

Most of our campers were excited for doing the swing. While I was helping Matt W put his harness on, he told me that he liked to critique restaurants’ food for their health and taste. I wondered which restaurant had the best healthy food and he answered with McDonald’s so I do not know if I would trust his judgment on restaurants.

Bob continued to surprise us with his ability to be sensitive given his normal, mischievous nature. I asked him if he wanted to join the cabin in the art room and he responded, “why the hell not?” but then when he got there he colored a rainbow that he was very proud of.

I once again got to be the archer for the council fire which I was happy about because it was the first outdoor one, which is much more special than the indoor ones, in my opinion.

As a birthday gift, we let Cody play the part of the golden eagle. This was the first time a camper was able to play a part in council fire. The golden eagle is covered in black paint so this was the perfect role for him not to be recognized and  therefore envied by other campers. During practice, he missed his cue and we were not sure what to expect, but he ended up doing a great job in the actual event, making it a great way to end the week. 

Stretch Out

If our cabin was experiencing problems with flexibility, this would no longer be an issue after Tuesday.  Because the pool was once again out of service, our first activity became chair yoga. The first afternoon activity was….chair yoga again! Luckily, most of our campers did not seem to mind and the leader did a good job trying to change it a little bit by making it into a game the second time. Chris spent most of the time choosing soothing songs for our cabin to enjoy from his collection of over 50 CD’s that he brought.

   
The evening program was open mic night, an activity that campers always seem to enjoy. In our cabin, Larry and Abdul performed a rap together and Grandpa Greg sang a song by the Eagles. However, no one could compete with Cody’s performance.

Cody spent a long time getting ready. He put on a nice shirt and tie and found a long gray wig to give him the rock star look he was trying to achieve. He spent an equally long amount of time choosing a song that was just right. He finally chose “Bohemian Rhapsody,” by Queen.

     
His performance was compete with background dancers that he called out of the crowd, a power slide on his knees, and a throwing of the wig at the end of the song. This was a side of Cody that we liked to see, instead of the emotional Cody we often have.

     
Wednesday started off with art. The campers started by using crayons and then covered it with a thin layer of black paint. After it dried, they could scrape the paint off to draw a picture.

     
The counselors also did an impressive drawing, a “Seneca Sheepdogs” poster that we can hang in the cabin. This will be especially nice since our posters disappeared during the week off.  

     
A lot of the campers wanted to go on the boat on Root Beer Lake. “Is this coffee decaf or regular?” Leslie asked when he saw how brown the water was.

     
Bob came down with a stomach ache and all he wanted to do was lay in bed, which meant that the counselors also got to fight over who  got to stay in the cabin with him while he rested and took a nap of his own.

     
Bob was not the only one with this sickness though. There were at least 11 cases in the camp and more with counselors. The sickness caused the evening activity to be canceled and counselors were instructed to get campers to bed early.  We had our cabin soundly sleeping by a little before 10, which is a big feat for us this week. 

Stars and Stripes of ITC

Matt W always talks about his love for America whenever he gets the opportunity. He speaks about George Bush and our troops more than anyone I know. When asked if he liked the Indian costumes, he replied "yes, but nothing is as beautiful as old glory there," and pointed at the flag. Monday was the Fourth of July so we knew Matt would be exceptionally excited on the holiday dedicated to his favorite thing.  Everyone, including Matt was dressed in his or her red, white and blue  and Leslie even wanted to deck his face out with full face paint (Which later got in his eyes but it was worth it he said).

   
I got to know Grandpa Greg and he had a lot of good things to say. For his job, he is a motivational speaker and according to his business card, he is a cancer survivor. Grandpa Greg also got even more in touch with technology than he already is by getting a Facebook account with his iPhone.             
   
For the Fourth of July, we celebrated with a parade. Everyone wore flags, streamers and firefighter helmets in our cabin. When the music started playing, cabins filed in a line and we marched around camp. Most of the campers did not have a problem, but Bob was a different story. Bob loves to go as fast as he can in his chair and even though he was dressed like a member of the parade, he did not want to be one. He ran into at least 3 people trying to pass them with his signature mischievous smile on his face.
   
The parade ended at the fire pit, where we had another fire. It was so patriotic that when Grandpa Greg called me during the fire, it took me a long time to find him in the sea of red, white and blue.

   
After the parade we had a firework show. All of the fireworks were legal, so it was not the most impressive display but the campers still enjoyed them and most had the opportunity to have sparklers.

   
At night, Leslie told me about his boss that he did not like. I asked him why he did not like her and he responded “She was mean to me and cut my hours….plus she was fat.” 

The End and the Beginning

Friday and Saturday were both relaxing in terms of activities. On Friday, we created a poster to represent our cabin. The poster obviously had a picture of a sheepdog and had everyone’s signatures on it. Cody helped draw a picture of a campfire that was a little too close to the sheepdog so it ended up looking like a sheepdog being roasted.

 
 Chris spent pretty much the entire day working on a large art project. He used a big piece of paper and glued glitter, paper cutouts, feathers and even a toy magic wand to it. It also says “office” because he plans to bring it to his office.

 
 We finally got a teepee at the camp so we were  excited to have an outdoor council fire. Sadly, it rained so it ended up being inside again. However, this did mean that I got to be the archer for the third time in a row so I did not complain.

   
We received our cabin assignments for next week and we will be getting four new campers on top of the 5 that are staying, so it will definitely be a busy week next week in Seneca.

   
Most of the cabin was tired on Saturday which was good for me because I needed some rest. We watched Grease for the evening activity and I even got in a nap and run during the day for my one-hour break.
   
On Sunday, we welcomed Matt W, Larry, and Greg into our cabin. Larry was supposed to be in my cabin three times last year and never showed up so it was good to see he actually exists. He is good friends with Abdul so he was especially happy when he arrived. 

The legend: Grandpa Greg

   
Greg is a legend here at camp. He is 67 years old and he has been coming to camp since it opened, thus he gets the nickname "Grandpa Greg." He has all the latest technology including an iPhone and a very fast wheelchair. 

   
The night was pretty crazy with getting 6 people with wheelchairs in bed but it should get faster as the week progresses. Hopefully I will have some more funny stories from these campers.