What Keeps us Going

Sometimes I feel like I've spent the past two years in a constant state of "stressed out" with living in the real world.  But it's always nice when something happens to remind me that for now, I'm in the right place.

Ask anyone who works at a summer camp and you will be told that we "don't have favorites" when it comes to campers.  But it's all a load of crap.  We all have our favorite kids over the years.  Some are lifers at camp, and others only come once but manage to leave a strong enough impression that they make the list.  One of my favorites is here at New Year's Camp this week.  

Tonight, at the big NYE bash, he was sipping sparkling grape juice from a plastic champagne flute with his pinky finger extended.  I told him that I liked how he was holding his cup like that, to which he responded, "I don't know why I do that I just have this problem with my hands."  I told him that in fact, he did not have a problem, that it was the classy way to hold a fancy drinking glass, and that his hands were perfectly normal.

He then proceeded to thank me...for calling him normal.  

It kind of broke my heart that being called normal seemed to make his day better.  It's really ironic, though, because around here, nobody is normal, and that's what makes us all our very own kind of normal.