Winging it

“Don’t Panic; Adjust.” These are the words of wisdom Otis, the camp director, gives us all during orientation. These are the words I live by as camp goes on and the unexpected and un-plan-able happens.

While it took until my first orientation – when I was in my last year of the JC program at age 17 – to hear these exact words, it’s advice I’ve heard in many permutations and tried to live by. The fun part about camp, though, is that my ability to ‘wing it’ doesn’t just effect me. Whereas in the “real” world, I can adjust to a situation, and if I mess up, only I’m effected, at camp, it’s 20 kids and 3 counselors (on average) who are also affected.

Today, I had to close down a large archery range because of wind and fit 26 campers and 3 counselors in a place made for half that many people with enough equipment for just over half that many. Rather than shooting 5 or 6 rounds, each person got to shoot two. Yet they had fun. This was my second super-successful ‘wing’ of the summer. And I’m not going to lie; I’m proud of it. But it’s all in the selling. With a little help and a lot of energy and enthusiasm, anything can be fun. (Well, anything short of a dentist visit, that is.)

My first big-wing of the summer was when the kids didn’t want to play a game we’d planned on playing and I looked at my JCs and said, “give me two playground balls, two Frisbees, two hula-hoop, an, um, six cones.” (In my experience, everything at camp can be done with a combination of no more than the sum of those items. Well, that and pennies.) Again – the mere enthusiasm of me and the other counselors was enough to fuel the enjoyment of the campers. (That, and the fact that I managed to illiterate every sentence to the extent that it was even annoying me that I couldn’t stop…but it was one of those adventures that makes for a unique camp experience.)

But back to the point…

No matter how hard you train for something and plan, something else will always happen. A wrinkle, if you will. But when I was a kid, I didn’t take wrinkles in my blanket as an excuse to make my bed – quite the contrary. I took a made bed as an excuse to pick up my blanket and wrinkle it up. I used to wrinkles as roadways and hills for my toy cars and had a lot of fun.

I guess I’ve always liked wrinkles. And I still do. I’ve been doing the same thing (at camp) for three years, and it’s nice when I have a day where I get to change it up, whether planned or not. Every day is a new challenge. And a day without one challenge, is, well, boring! I’m like a shark; if I stop moving forward, I die.

Wrinkles keep me alive. (Now if only the rest of society saw that, I could throw out my iron.)