So I have taken a break from blogging for a good part of the summer I am back now. So this summer I am a counselor at Mishkan Israel, Lily goes to camp there. I am there every Friday but this week I was there the whole week because they went on trips everyday since they can't go swimming during the 8 days of mourning. It was also color war this past week.
It has been a rather entertaining of weeks. On Monday we broke out color war, to do it all the counselor had to dress up and hide. I happened to be wearing a clown wig and pirates hat. By the end of breakout three of my campers were crying because they were afraid of me. Clearly a trade mark of a good counselor is hysterical campers.
Tuesday our trip was to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich. If you have ever been to this museum you would know it is not a place for children that are 5 and under. In case I could not figure this out my self, shortly after entering one of my campers(who is one of triplets) turns to me and says "I went here with my mommy and daddy" and her sister chimed in "yeah and we were kicked out." At this point I knew nothing good could come of this trip.
Anyway after a little while we took our group the Torah Tots across the street to a play ground. As soon as we get there the children scatter and I am looking for a bench that has a view of the entire playground. No such luck, so I ended up standing in the center of the playground while another counselor as pushing some kids on the swings and the last counselor was helping a camper on some other piece of equipment.
After a few minutes of counting my 8 campers like a very OCD person I heard loud screaming, the type no counselor ever wants to hear. I look to it source hoping its not a camper and just some other child. Right next to me I do see a camper of mine screaming. She is face down on top of her arm on the ground. This has BAD written all over it. I quickly scoop her up and ask her what happened.
She is grabbing her arm and there the sobs I make out bee sting. This I found confusing it defiantly looked like she trip, but I didn't care about that I just was thinking 'What if she is allergic?' frantically. So I asked a sobbing four year old if she was allergic to bee stings, like she was a reliable source. "No" she said through the tears. Next I asked her to see it, hoping to get a better picture of the damage, but she was stubborn and wouldn't even let me peek.
By now the other two counselors were by my side and one, Chana Mirel took the camper from me. She took our camper across the street to the Museum where the rest of the camp still was. Until snack I was at the playground with now only one other counselor and was down to 7 campers. I had enough time to think about the incident more thoroughly and was pretty sure it was not a bee sting and she had tripped and fell on her arm. Now I felt responsible because in a perfect world I should be able to be in eight places at once and keep my campers from tripping. I was still hoping it was a bee sting because it would probably be less severe of an injury and I would have known I could not have prevented it.
About twenty minutes later Chana Mirel came back with the injured camper and we finally were able to get her to move her hand from her arm enough to survey the damage. There was clearly no bee sting but there was defiantly a bit of swelling and she was still crying. now that my other campers were with the rest of the camp I could go with Chana Mirel and this camper to the bus where there was a first aid kit. We offered her ice first and she wanted nothing to do with it. Next we got out one of those triangular bandages that are in all the Red Cross videos, and we tried to splint her arm but she refused that too. So I became the dummy and Chana Mirel splinted me to show that it was nothing to be afraid of. She still did not want any form of treatment. Anyone who has tried would know it is very hard to reason with a four year old who has made up their mind.
At this point I had to leave since my bus was going the farthest so I do not know what happened next. Two days later though the camper came into camp with a bright pink cast and was very happy about her 'pink arm.'
I am going to call it a nigh and write about the rest of the week another time.
Oh and there is still time to sign up for encampment the deadline is the 6th.
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