A Summer Star
My summer reflections take me back to one college summer break when I decided to be a Camp Counselor in Maine. I had already been a camper so I thought to myself, how hard could this be???
I was going to be in charge of 10 eight-year-olds in the wilderness of Maine. I reasoned that it could be a really good thing as I might finally be able to learn all of the activities I had not quite mastered as a camper such as archery, tennis, arts & crafts, water skiing etc. Sadly, that didn’t happen. Management asked me if I could swim and then named me Boating Instructor. I knew if I was named Boating Instructor on that criterion, there was probably not a lot of expertise with the other instructors.
As it turned out, I arrived at the campsite a little later than all of the other counselors who had already had a chance to get to meet each other. When I arrived, it was swimming period so all of the counselors were on the dock while all of the campers were in the water. The Waterfront Director told me that in order to be able to stand on the dock, I had to show him that I could swim. He told me to jump in the water and then totally ignored me! I did not care as I am like a fish in water so I just kept on swimming. Finally, he told me that I could get out of the water & when I did, I was standing on the dock shaking hands and meeting everyone for the first time. However, I started to get this strange feeling, as while they were shaking my hand and introducing themselves, I felt that they were looking at my body instead of my face. I really found that to be odd but did not say anything until swimming period was over.
As I walked into our bunk, I looked into the full length mirror and saw to my horror that the new bathing suit I had purchased was totally see through once wet!!! I ran to another counselor and asked her why she hadn’t said a word to me about it??? She responded, “Well, it is your bathing suit so I assumed you knew it was see-
through.” Actually, I did not know this and ended-up wearing a big baseball shirt over my bathing suit for the whole rest of the summer!!!
Initially, I did not really like the Waterfront Director as I thought he was rather arrogant. He did not really mingle with the rest of the counselors and seemed somewhat
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Bits from Baaaahbra
01
A Column
by Barbara Gross
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