Halfway through my summer job as a camp counselor for kids between ages 7 and 10, I threw fairness out the window and began acting like Judge Judy: assume both parties are lying and rule against both.
For example, say two of my campers came to me with a dispute over a banana. It might have gone like this:
Sabrina: Sam! She took my banana! I had it first and she just came and grabbed it out of my hand.
Katie: That’s not true! I didn’t take her banana!
Me: So where did you get that banana you’re holding?
Katie: Ok, so maybe I took it. But she stole my fruit roll-up yesterday!
Sabrina: She took my banana! Make her give it back!
Had this dispute occurred at the start of camp, I likely would have spent five minutes brokering a compromise. But these petty fights were endless, and if I interrogated, pacified, and satisfied both campers, I would have energy for nothing else and arrive back at Georgetown a shadow of a man.
So what I would actually do is this: take the banana away from both girls and say something like, “You two cut it out. I don’t care who started it. Now no one gets a banana. Don’t let it happen again.” And I’d walk away, leaving two sad faces and a stream of protests in my wake.
Heartless? Maybe. Unfair to both of them? Probably. But, despite my initial hope to be a positive influence on these largely misbehaving children, after a time I just didn’t care.
Not all of the children were badly behaved. Maybe a third of them were consistently well-behaved and a handful I even miss. But for the rest, talking back, ignoring my directions and overall, “giving me attitude,” as they termed it, was the norm.
This day camp was part of a social services organization in Manhattan funded largely by government grants and private donations. I arrived at this camp hoping to influence these children’s upbringings for the better, if only a little. I joked before the camp began that my campers would be lumps of clay and I would mold them with all the wisdom of my nineteen years.
Had I known what I was talking about, I would have actually told my friends that my campers would be stones. No matter how hard I would try to mold them, without any serious power tools, they’re not going to change. Sadly for me, children learn their behavior from their parents, not the camp counselor they see five days a week, nine hours a day, for two months.
So I gave up trying to teach them why it was wrong to talk back and why cleaning up your own mess is not an unreasonable expectation and, to salvage my quality of life, began looking out for number one.
But then, on my very last day, the campers gave me a large good-bye card inscribed with a goodbye message from each of them. They were sweet. In oversized, bubbly writing, one girl wrote, “Sam We will all miss you so much. We want you to stay next year!” Another wrote, “Sam I miss you I miss you so Sam I miss you so much Sam: by Ariana.”
Sitting there with the card in my hands with all my campers sitting around me chattering among themselves, I was filled with affection, and a small amount of hope. Maybe I did change my campers? Maybe just a little?
“Does anyone have anything they want to say to Sam, any favorite memories?” the other counselor asked. The moment of truth.
No one did anything. Then one girl raised her hand.
“Remember that time you popped the ice in my ear?” she said to me. I thought for a second, my mind blank until I remembered that about a month ago, I had let the little girl listen to the packet of water in an ice pack pop as I activated it. I nodded at her. “That was cool,” she said, grinning widely.
“Anyone else?” the other counselor asked. “No? Okay, you guys can play now.”
The children scrambled to get up and grab toys and markers.
Well, I thought to myself, so much for that.
