Camp

I have had a lot of jobs over the last ten years, with quite a bit of variation. Assistant Gymnastics Instructor. Sales clerk. Babysitter. Software Tester. English Language Assistant. Coldstone...person. French teacher. Volunteer Coordinator. Caller at a calling center. English Language Assistant and Volunteer Coordinator top the list as my two favorite positions (with the lowest salaries), babysitter and and software tester are down at the bottom at least favorite (with the two highest salaries). The job at the calling center is the only one I have ever quit, after lasting only three days. I would have quit after the first fifteen minutes, but my supervisor was so damn attractive I tried to stick it out. I don't regret having any of these jobs. I can look back on each one and point to ways in which they helped me further my career, develop my interests, or at least help financially.
Except for one.
One job I look back on and think, Why, why, WHY did I ever do that to myself? It made me cry nearly ever day. It paid next to nothing during the time in my life I least needed money. It made me physically sick. I didn't like the people I worked for and few of the people I worked with.
Summer camp counselor.
Every day for eight weeks during the summer after my freshman year of college I got on a school bus at 7:45 in the morning and went on an hour long journey, gathering children who routinely vomited each and every morning before arriving at our destination. I have a phobia of
vomit. Even just knowing someone in the same building as I am is throwing up is enough to make me sick enough to do it myself. Obviously I did not fare well on these bus rides.
And this was before camp even BEGAN.
Once camp began I often had MORE children vomit throughout the day. Sometimes in the pool. I do not know WHAT parents were feeding their children during the summer of 2004.
It was either burning hot or raining. I had kids running off into the forest. I had girls shrieking over centipedes. I had boys sticking their butts on one another. I had food fights and naked children running about trying to pee on things and at least one girl per day who cried unintelligibly over something incomprehensible and three hypochondriacs and a lot of snot and blood and tears and parental notes and YOU try getting sunscreen on hyperactive 6 year olds with ADHD and a bizarre obsession with running around NAKED.
AND I had to get in the pool.
In a bathing suit.
It was the most horrific of all nightmares.
In the middle of it all, I had to sing this song repeatedly:

Beaver one beaver all let's all do the beaver call
Beaver two beaver three let's all climb the beaver tree
Beaver four beaver five let's all do the beaver jive
Beaver six beaver seven let's all go to beaver heaven
Beaver eight beaver nine CLAP CLAP it's BEAVER TIME!


But you know what the worst part is? The most ridiculous, awful,
insane part of the whole thing?
I went back the next summer.