"Even after years of circling in the same water, it’s possible to find your way to shore."
Touch, Season 1, Episode 11
Touch, Season 1, Episode 11
Slacklining!
I KNOW.
I actually do that sometimes.
Anyways, it started when I was shovelling dirt in the garden, and my neighbours came running over. They’re about 12, 10 and 5 let’s say.
I still needed to get work done, so I suggested they use some chalk and draw on the sidewalk.
They totally went for it. And then they drew for a while.
It was a pretty long time for a five year old to spend on drawing.
I was pretty impressed.
And then I thought, what does she (the five year old) see when she draws something? How do her drawings look to her?
Because to most adults, we often don’t even know what they’re drawing, yet it’s so clear in their minds.
‘It’s obviously you and me…duh.’
Or ‘It’s a dog! Can’t you tell?’
So do they literally see the same objective drawing differently than how we see it? Is it a perfect drawing to them? Or do they still see it as not good?
Or do we, as adults, just not use our imagination enough?
So I had never played this game before until I went to a church in Dunnville where my camp was doing a promotion.
Let me explain it to you. We had 6 people in our group.
Each person starts out by writing two lines of the beginning of a story on their sheet of paper. After they’re finished, they fold over a tiny piece of the top so that one line is covered, and the other line can be seen.
They then pass the paper to their left.
This person adds another line, by only looking at the bottom line. Once they’re done, they fold the paper so only their new line can be seen.
They then pass the paper to their left.
This continues until there is no room left on the paper.
We played this game in Sunday School, and it was marvellous. I love children.
This was my story.
I will write it so each line is at it is written on the page.
One day, I had a friend named Griselda,
she loved to jump in puddles
of jello, but every time she jumped in she stayed on top.
She was very discouraged so she decided to eat some cheese
because who doesn’t like cheese? It’s so
melty, soft, warm, mushy, sometimes crunchy,
but the only kind of cheese he didn’t like was soup cheese.
So he stayed away from that and instead found a polar bear.
He trained this polar bear to do tricks.
Soon, she could do every trick you could imagine. Even the
double back flip with a 3 quarter spin
and his trophy was a block of cheese.
He was so happy he peed in his cheese pants.
But because they were made of cheese, they could soak up
all of the grape juice in the world and solve world hunger.
So everyone started laughing at the horse’s ears.
They all loved his ears! Finally the horse felt like people noticed him.
The end.
until they tell you.
If you’re lucky enough for that to happen.
I have a story where this came from.
A couple weeks ago, I was helping to run a youth service for the camp that I work out.
We spent a bunch of time planning it, and got to the church around 2 for a service at 7. It was a long day.
But a fantastic one.
One part of the day stuck out in my mind as making the night for me.
Now you should know that we didn’t exactly plan out the entire service, it’s camp, come on, you just go with the flow. So about four minutes before the offering was to be collected, they asked if myself and two others could do it. We said sure.
During offering, I was passing the plate around, and one little girl said ‘HI papa hum!’
Now, this may will mean nothing to you. So let me explain.
I have been working at this camp for 4 years. In 2010, I was a wilderness counsellor. It was a great summer. One week, we call Adventure Camp, this girl (the same one from above), let’s call her Abby (although that’s not her name, I want to keep that anonymous for her sake) was a camper with me. We had a fantastic week. It was not an easy week, but it was a great week.
As we have no lake at our camp, we need to bus to go canoeing. On the bus, myself and another counsellor were somehow given nicknames. I think another staff called me Han, as a shortform, but a camper heard Ham. And then that somehow became Hum, and I became the dad, while another girl became the mom. (She got the unfortunate nickname of Mama Nits, so I wasn’t complaining).
These then became our names for this one week of the summer.
What astounds me is that Abby remembered this almost 2 years later. I was one of five counsellors of hers for less than a week in one summer. And we had that much of an influence on her that she remembered the silly little nickname they gave me.
It amazes me.
Stuns me.
Shocks me.
Astonishes me.
And I’m absolutely positive that Abby had no idea how much what she said meant to me. She didn’t mean to tell me how much of an influence I was, but she did.
And this is what I love.
This is what makes me come back to camp year after year. How can you not want to change a child’s day, week, summer, year or maybe even life with one week at camp?
It made me switch out of co-op in school.
It made me come to this camp, after mine closed.
I’m so excited to see what else it will make me do.
What else He will make me do.
What else He has planned for me.
I could feel what another person is feeling.
If they’re actually as sick as they say they are,
or
if it hurts as much as they say it does.
Does a migraine for her feel like just a headache for me, and my migraines are MUCH worse?
Is he in so much pain that I can’t even comprehend it?
Does she feel a kind of pain that I don’t even know exists?
But most of all, I wish I could feel what another person is feeling so that I could take those bad feelings away from them.
Take their pain from them, even if I had to bear it. Because I hate seeing people hurt. I know that I could handle it, but I’m scared that other people can’t.
how many ridiculous psychology experiments completely failed.
But we simply never hear about them because
one
they didn’t prove what was wanted and
two
because of how ridiculous they would sound.
you will do anything to procrastinate…
raspberry lemonade always tastes like summer.
