The Flat Rock

Friday, June 7, 2019

I've gone from, "Oh my God, what was I thinking," to spending three days and two nights at the Flat Rock.  As I sit here trying to figure out how to proceed, this thought came into my mind.  T4, I have a suggestion for the camp t-shirts for next year.  The top line on the t-shirt should read, Doing Time On the Rock.  Underneath this it should read, Camp Flat Rock 2020.

If I have the scholar count correct, forty-five made the trip.  According to T4, this is the smallest group she ever took to camp.  There were two no shows on the day we departed for camp.  There were somewhere between five and seven that didn't make the trip due to behavior issues in the classroom.  There were nine adults on the trip, I was one of those nine.  The scholars were transported to Camp Flat Rock in two school busses.  I drove my car.  When I was packed I decided that I'd put my two small bags of stuff in the back seat as I figured I would be transporting stuff to camp in the back of my SUV.  I guessed correctly.  The back of my SUV was full.  It's amazing what certain adults pack for a three day, two night camp trip.  Just before I hit the button to close the back hatch of my SUV this thought came into my mind.  "Looking at what I just crammed into the back of my SUV you'd think I was traveling with my friend SHC of Vino to Florida."  Sorry, that is a little inside humor and I thought it was quite funny.

I took me a long time trying to decide how to do this but I think I have it.  I'm going to break it down into sections; cabin groups, trail group activities, and table groups for meals.  I'll start with cabin groups.  T4 assigned me to the Shawnee cabin and it had seven bunk beds, two showers, two toilets and a two sink hand washing area.  Outside there was a large picnic table set up with a checker board, two rocking chairs and one love seat style chair..  I was joined by T5-6 and eleven scholars.  We had a few behavior issues from the same scholars that have behavior problems in the classroom but for the most part things went well.  Although it went well, that is not to say that we didn't have any interesting things happen.

Cabin events in no particular order.

• This from a scholar who has a history of trying to hurt himself.  "Mr. Schultz, I sometimes have real scary nightmares when I sleep, is it all right if I staff up all night?"  "Yes."  "Can I leave the lights on?"  "No."  "Can I use my flashlight?"  "Yes, just be quiet."
•  "Mr. Schultz, I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep."  "Why is that?"  "This is the first time I've ever went to bed without my parents near me."
• This from a scholar who is pretty wired even when he is on his medication.  "Mr. Schultz, I can't find my medicine, someone must have stolen it."  "No one stole you medicine."  "Yes they did, I can't find it."  "Did you look everywhere?"  "Yes!"  "Get off your bed, remove one item at a time and see if you can find your medication."  Two items were picked up, "I found it Mr. Schultz."
• "Someone stole my camera."  "No one stole your camera."  "Yes they did, I can't find it."  Did you look under all of that junk on your mattress?"  "Yes!"  "Look again."  "I found it Mr. Schultz."
• The last overnight evening.  It's around 10:30pm, lights are out.  It's pretty quiet then I hear it.  The rattle of a plastic bag, the kind that may have chips, pretzels, or similar snacks in it.  I chose to say nothing as I didn't want to wake everyone up and battle to get them back to sleep but I figured someone helped himself to the snacks without asking.  The crunching on the snack lasted about fifteen minutes and then it was silent.

Scholars were broken down into table groups for all of our meals.  I was assigned to Table #6 and RetiredMD joined me to monitor the activities of eight scholars. The scholars were served two meals, lunch and dinner, on day one.  Three meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner on day two.  Two meals, breakfast and lunch on day three.  The best part of the meals, as far as the scholars were concerned, they could eat as much as they wanted to eat.

• The nicest surprise, at least to me, was the number of scholars that went to the salad bar to grab something to eat.  They picked out exactly what they wanted, found the salad dressing of choice, sat down, ate all of their salad, and then started on the entre.
• The chunk of a scholar at our table, a T4-M, pretty much ate like a bird and that surprised me given his size.  I should say, he ate like a bird until desert arrived, and then he ate like Cookie Monster.
• This is a T4-F during lunch and dinner.  No matter what was served; hamburgers, French fries, corn dogs, chicken tenders, or tacos this young scholar made a sandwich and did it exactly the same way each time.  Two pieces of white bread, one piece of bread with peanut butter and one piece of bread with jelly. Then she carefully removed all of the crust from the bread so that her sandwich was almost perfectly round. 
• The meal was chicken tenders, macaroni and cheese, and peas.  As I watched this person eat I looked twice to be sure I saw what I saw.  This person took all of the peas and dumped them on top of the macaroni and cheese so I was looking at a big blob of orange and green all mixed together.  This combination had me thinking about trying it but the more I thought about it I've never had a food item that was blend of orange and green so I think I'm going to pass.  Oh, I forget to mention one thing.  The person that created this concoction was the other adult at my table.

T4 and I were in the same trail group for all of the group activities.  We were the Skunks.  There were multiple activities so I'm going to narrow in down to a few.

We started at the Alpine Tower.

• This is a confidence building, overcoming your fears climb, that ascended fifty feet up into the air.  For those brave enough to actually made it to the top they got to ring the bell that was up there to claim their bragging rights for all to hear.  I was told three made it to the top, all F's.
• Initially not every scholar in our group was interested in climbing the tower.  As time went by, one by one they donned the harness, placed a brain bucket (helmet) on their head, got checked out by the camp counselor to see that they were properly equipped, had the safety cable attached to their harness and up the went.  I believe every scholar in our group overcame their fear of heights and climbed up to the first level of the tower and then were lowered to the ground by the camp counselor.
• We did have a few bumps in the road.  While two scholars were very good at going up the tower, once they reached the first platform and looked down they got scared.  One of the camp counselors had to climb the tower to convince one of the scholars to start the descent, it took him almost twenty minutes to do this.

 From the Alpine Tower we went to the swimming pool.

• Upon arrival every scholar had to take a swimming test and then were given a wrist band that indicated their swimming level.  There were three colored wrist bands; blue, you could swim, yellow, you could sort of swim, and red, you can't swim.
• One of the life guards then asked the scholars who could swim.  Up went five hands if I recall it correctly.  Their task was to swim across the width of the pool towards the deep end, swim under a lane guide to the deep end, and then thread water for a minute.  I saw one scholar do a couple of freestyle strokes, the rest were dog paddling, and one scholar, who claimed he could swim, had to be rescued by the life guards.  
• I believe three of our scholars were given a blue wrist band indicating that they could swim.  Being a non-swimmer who just watched this swim test I was nervous.  While I can't swim I do know how to do one thing as I watched my daughter swim competitively for around ten years.  I know how to determine a true swimmer and if it was up to me no blue wrist bands would have been awarded to this group.

On to the Pond for canoeing, fishing, rope swing, and water slide.  This, in my opinion, was the favorite area for the scholars and several of the adults.

• With a little prodding from T4, something she is real good at otherwise I wouldn't be at camp, every one of our scholars got into a canoe.  I was joined in a canoe by the same scholar I had when we did this last September so we needed little time to get organized and off we went. 
• The entertainment value watching the scholars fish was priceless.  They didn't have a good day fishing.  I believe they caught one fish.  Getting a bit disgruntled, the scholars started asking for worms to fish with rather than a piece of bread.  The camp counselor finally gave in to the request for worms and went off and got some.  The worms arrived in a blue and white cooler.  When the counselor sat it on the ground he warned the scholars that the worms were old and would be thrown out shortly.  They meant nothing to the scholars as they just wanted a worm.  When the lid was removed from the cooler the stench was just plain nasty so someone had to reach into the cooler, grab a worm, and hand it to the scholars.  This is the camp memory that will stay with me for quite some time.  T4, donning a plastic glove, with an article of clothing covering her nose, and despite the nasty smell, reached into the cooler, swirled her hand around in this nearly black, slimy looking muck, and pulled out a worm.  Absolutely gross and sadly I didn't think to record this event on my cell phone.   

One of my worries when I started writing this blog was being able to catch the true feel of the camp.  I not sure if I did that so I'm going to leave you with this.  One person, T4, had a vision, "to provide funding so underprivileged children can be afforded the opportunity to excel outside of their boundaries through an outdoor educational camping experience."  For three days I watched forty five scholars running, laughing, overcoming their fears, holding turtles, touching or holding a snake, catching bugs, stuffing their faces, swimming until they were exhausted, and having a whole lot of fun.

This past Thursday T4 said this to me, "Schultz, do you know how many times I heard a scholar call my name at camp?  It had to be in the thousands."  When she said this to me I just laughed.  As I sit here thinking about what T4 said to me this popped into my head.  "T4, you heard your named called thousands of times.  For every time you heard your named called I bet there was just as many smiles on the faces of your scholars.  If you don't think so, just take a look at the faces on the pictures of all the scholars that were taken over the three days at Camp Flat Rock."

"T4, T4, T4, are you listening to me?  T4.  HEY T4!  You may have heard that thousands of times but I know forty-five scholars who left Camp Flat Rock with memories that will last a life time.  Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

That's it for today.  The school year is about to end.  There will be one more blog post and then I'll call it quits until the next school year.