Teach Your Children Well

“Jack!  Come under the tree!” yells one of the other kids.

He’s a stocky boy I don’t recognize, from another group:  about Jack’s height, but broader, with a pudgy face.  The tree in question is seven feet high, and the only one of its size near the parking lot;  just tall enough for its drooping branches to shield a tight circle of children in commiseration.  The stocky boy is waiting underneath it with Jack’s friends Roderick and Tam, looking for a fourth.

Jack runs over to join them.  For a while I watch them as they all stand facing inward, shoulder to shoulder, holding a discussion I cannot hear.  But eventually Jack decides he isn’t interested.   He leaves just as easily as he joined, runs off to watch the members of a nearby group battle on the asphalt with Yu-Gi-Oh cards instead.  The remaining three watch him go, without malice, then close their circle.  I tousle his hair as he runs by.

Mornings at the Gifted School Summer Camp are like this.  The parents, moms mostly, drive the shade-lined paths around the grounds of Lowlands Regional to the western side of the school, park their cars in the long lot, then escort their boys and girls into the coned-off smaller lot at the far end, into the hands of the counselors.  Each group has its own designated two-parking-space section, marked by a plastic bin into which all the lunch bags go, and by the presence of that group’s counselors, and on the first day of session, by a sign.  The kids touch base, then run around merrily.  They have friends in other groups:  they want to see what each other has brought with them, want to know what each other are doing.  The counselors, teenage boys and girls, give them as much rein as they can, then reel them in if they start to misbehave or become too boisterous.  Every one was once a member of the Camp themselves.  They all know the drill.

Dana, the head counselor of Jack’s group, is a good example. She’s a rail-thin brunette with small hoop earrings and a clear voice, articulate and confident.  She might be 15, or 16, or 18;  I thought I saw her drive into the parking lot in a white Beetle one morning, but I wouldn’t swear to it.   She’s involved in Drama Club on her own time, and has that hard-won child-care skill of seamlessly and effortlessly changing her approach when faced with a roadblock.  As Jack zips around her, she takes a swig of coffee from a styrofoam Dunkin Donuts cup, sweeps a little girl clinging to her knee up and gives her a hug, rescues a lunch from being stomped on and calls two boys chasing each other back to the correct side of the line, all in the space of less than 20 seconds.  It makes me smile.

The moms and dads, having relinquished their children, wander back to the long lot, get in their cars and leave;  they have jobs to go to, I imagine, or errands to run.   I have nothing similarly urgent on my own plate, and so most mornings I sit with Jack on the curb of the parking lot until that last moment after the Morning Announcements, when the children line up and march inside-  snuggling him if he’s tired and snuggly, or watching him play if he isn’t, and being around frequently enough in either case that the counselors and campers treat me as a routine presence.  Today is better, though.  Today, I don’t have to leave at all:  it’s Field Trip Day, and I have signed on to act as an auxiliary chaperone for a visit to Seawitch Aquarium.   It’s perfect weather for it, clear and cool and breezy.  I am kitted out with backpack, water bottles, sandwiches, communication devices, list of campers in my group, general regulations for the Aquarium:  all the things I hadn’t thought to bring with me when I chaperoned the last field trip, to the City of Mists Zoo. (There was a paper sent home that time listing the suggested items in detail, but Jack neglected to mention it was in his backpack.)  In twenty minutes, the buses will be arriving for us all to load up.  It was a good time before.   I expect it to be a good time again.

Voices are carrying.  “I brought the garlic!” yells out Roderick, from under the tree.

“I brought the holy water!” yells the stocky boy.

Nnh?… My eyes snap west to them, over my shoulder.  Dana is already past me, moving at a good clip;   the boys are off the concrete, and they know they’re not supposed to be off the concrete, and now they’ve drawn her attention by yelling.  “Owen!” she calls to the stocky boy, coming to rest with the coffee cup cradled against her chest.  She holds up a finger.  “One. Not supposed to be yelling.”  The boys hunch their shoulders, smirk.  “Two,” she says, holding up the second finger.   “Not supposed to be on the grass.”  They leave the tree, start to clamber over the curb.

“Three,” I say, leaning past her, stopping them short. “…Don’t bother using garlic and holy water against a vampire!  If you’re close enough to use that stuff, he’s close enough to tear your throat out!” Their eyes go wide.  “Shoot him in the heart with a crossbow bolt!” I pantomime.  “From a DISTANCE!!”

The broad sweep of my right arm that accompanies the word “distance” connects with Dana’s coffee cup and knocks it into her chest, forcing her to take a step back to try to right it.  “Ooop!” I say, freezing, brows up.   “Oh… darn it!  Are you-”

…But the lid on the cup has held.  She looks down at it and her shirt, then at the boys, goggle-eyed and stock-still, then at me:  really, as if for the first time, straight in the eyes.  I open my mouth to speak, mortified-  and stop.  For that heartbeat, that one brief, funny, embarrassing moment, I realize she’s not seeing me as Mr. Last Name, Jack’s Dad, the 2D cut-out.  She’s seeing me as an actual human person:  a klutz with a sense of humor.  And it’s wonderful.

She bursts into laughter.  “It’s OK,” she says.  She takes another sip of coffee, and walks away, back to Jack and the other children, laughing merrily.  I watch her go, relieved, if still embarrassed.

“Silver bullet?” asks Owen.

“Hnnnnh,” I sigh, shaking my head.  “Dude,”  I tell him, laughing.  “That’s a werewolf.”

I wonder if they need a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher? I think.