The Maroon T-shirt

The Maroon T-Shirt

“Nathan!” The curly headed boy I had been talking to turned around to see who had called his name. “Don’t talk to the help. They’re below us.”
Nathan looked at me, biting his lower lip he took a step back, “Sorry, I’ve got to go.”
I looked beyond Nathan to the man who had barked the order. David Pate. He is the associate director of the summer camp of my employment. He shook his head at me and rolled up his window. I listened to the gears shift in the elaborate piece of machinery that his big truck was as he sped off; throwing up a cloud of brown dust from the gravel he drove on. So there I was, alone again. Sitting at the lemonade stand waiting for the thirsty campers to get back from the fishing derby. I contemplated the fact that I had not been good enough for the camp director’s son to talk with. I was just the hired help. I pulled my pride up by the boot strings by thinking to myself, “Had he passed me on the street any other day, he wouldn’t even have the nerve to talk to me. I’m better than all of these people.” Yes, at the beginning of that summer, I certainly had pride issues.
And there I was, a month into the summer. My red shirt was now a deep shade of maroon and had been since 9 that morning when I had fished a screaming camper out of the lake. I cursed the humid Arkansas July weather that did not allow me to dry out. I cursed the lunch hour that had not allowed me to change the sticky shirt because I was sifting through a garbage dumpster, looking for a lost retainer. It was now two in the afternoon and I was down at the lake again life guarding and more bitter than ever. But I was smiling.
My job title was “the extra”. It was explained to me that I was to be the extra activity leader, extra lifeguard, and extra kitchen staff and so on. Four weeks into the summer I realized extra was code for vomit cleaner upper, and scapegoat. If something went undone or got broken, it was my fault. During the second session, three boys had sunk a speedboat in Big Lake. Naturally, it was my fault for not checking for holes or patching it. “I hope you realize we could be facing a lawsuit right now if anyone had gotten hurt,” the camp director, Steven, hovered over me as I filled the coolers up with ice. Yes, I learned a lot about responsibility that summer. I had swallowed my pride the first time my boss made me cry in front of the rest of the staff. Working at the camp was one big mind game. It was survival of the fittest. If you could come out in August from an entire summer on this Hot Springs ranch, you were guaranteed to be a better person.
The red t-shirt I had donned at 5 that morning stuck to my back as sweat rolled out of my hair and down my neck. The sun hung high overhead it beat down on our shoulders, it seemed to make everything heavier. We, the staff, were hired to be mentors, friends, and roll models for children ages 8-15. Come what may, we were paid to always have that Christian smile plastered on our faces. We smiled as horses bit our fingers while we bridled them for the campers to ride; we smiled as we knelt on our hands and knees, cleaning up vomit from the notorious nervous camper. We smiled really big when we pulled eight year olds out of the lake, kicking and screaming, not ready to get off of the bumper boats. We smiled as we walked the crying homesick camper down to the nurses station, and at the end of the day, when we were too tired to take a shower before we passed out on our bunk beds in our cabins, we smiled when our camper accidentally wet the bed. The quote goes, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” if there is any underlying theme for the summer of my junior year in high school, that would be it. Truthfully, I have never been more humiliated in a working environment. I was treated like the third class citizen I most certainly was not and I was given no privacy whatsoever. The director frequently pulled me aside for “talks”. These talks happened in the early evening where he, as a “caring boss”, filled me in on my shortcomings. According to him, I was quirky, didn’t have a lot to say and awkward. No one on the staff liked me and I would end up alone if I continued to constantly push people out. After several talks like that, you get a little bitter. Reflecting on it all, I call it worthwhile. I can say in full confidence I learned more that summer than I ever have in my life. I wouldn’t know it until later, but working at that camp taught me a lot about what children want and need to see in an older person. It taught me not to ever show panic or concern around children, it taught me that a smile and a little attention goes a very long way.
I could tell Cynthia and I were going to chase each other in circles from the first moment I saw her. This nine year old with short-cropped dark hair and big brown eyes stared right into me as she walked through my cabin’s door. I watched her size me up and inspect my clothes, she then stared past me to my bunk bed where she looked at the brand name of my comforter and peered through my plastic drawer set at my personal belongings. I greeted her and her parents accordingly and offered to help drag her trunk full of summer camp clothes out of the back of her parents Mercedes while they smothered her with kisses goodbye.
“It will be okay.” I remember her father assured her in a hushed tone just as I tumbled through the swinging screen door with her last backpack.
“Of coarse it will! We’re going to have the best week ever! I’m so excited that you’re here, Cynthia. You are going to have so much fun in my cabin,” I squatted down so that I was at her height. “Don’t tell anyone else, but this is the best cabin on girl’s hill.” I winked at her. Her parents left shortly and I dragged in about eight more trunks and bragged more about my cabin being the best one.
We, as counselors, had been trained how to work a child’s mind. When a child realizes someone is his or her primary caretaker for a week, they automatically invest trust into the relationship. The girls in my cabin would trust me by bedtime. Especially the younger ones. Telling them they were in the best cabin on the hill was practically factual information to them before they even slipped into their sleeping bags. By the next morning, they would believe it religiously and by lunch the next day, they would be so full of cabin pride, they would be chanting and cheering for us all day long.
There was one point in the week where Cynthia, who was moaning and groaning incessantly with all the pain of a constipated nine year old, was dragging me across an open field. “Uuuuugh! Must go! I gotta go!” She squealed. We ran through the tall grass towards the forbidden port-a-pot. As the “extra”, I could afford to be the one that takes the kids to the bathroom. “Restrooms are at the top of the hill for a reason.” I thought to myself. Bitterly. “The plumbing is up there.”
When Cynthia swung open the door to the little blue box, a spider “lunged” at her and she refused to go in alone. Yes, I was forced to climb in the little port-a-pot with her. Once in, she refused to sit on the seat, fearful that spiders would crawl out of the hole and bite her. Once again, I was forced to act as a brace for her to cling to as she squatted over the stinky hole.

I was right, Cynthia and I did chase each other in circles all week. Despite the port-a-pot incident, she was loud. She wouldn’t sleep during naptime, she wouldn’t go to bed when the lights were turned out, she wouldn’t shower when everyone else did, she made my life miserable. Even so, I smiled at her, tucked her in and said bedtime prayers with her every night. Every morning I woke her up and she got a hug on the way down to breakfast. I asked her about her activities during the day and if she had made any new friends. Oh how I loathed that child. But I smiled. Always smiled. On Saturday, the very last day, I thought she had left without saying goodbye. Good riddens. Just as I thought that, I turned around and there she was. She stood there staring at me for the longest awkward minute. Then she hugged me and told me I was her hero. I asked her why she would say that, her response: “Because you noticed me, even when I wasn’t loud.”
We spend our entire lives on a mission to teach children things. When really, they’re the ones teaching us. Every encounter I have with a child changes me just a little. I struggle constantly to see the world as they do.
*
It was the kind of Philadelphia summer day that makes you wonder if the City of Brotherly Love is worth the sweat beads that instantly form on your upper lip and forehead upon exiting your cool home. I compare the feeling to that of opening an oven and being blasted by a puff of hot air. It was the kind of awkward moment that you, as an adult, know is awkward, yet you’re thankful that the child that it’s awkward with wasn’t old enough to be embarrassed, too. I had told Braheem he should take the coaster we just made out of popsicle sticks home to his dad. He replied simply, “I don’t got a dad. He locked up.” He shrugged it off, smiled and started gluing popsicle sticks to one another. “Imma invent something dats gon make me rich.” I was still translating the first sentence …I don’t have a father, he’s in jail…and now, I’m going to invent something that’s going to make me rich. What do you say to that? Braheem was 7, black and poor. At least that’s what his profile said. I did not choose to come here. I was brought in to work with the children in this West Chester homeless mission outreach. It was definitely different from anything I had ever experienced before. I was used to working with spoiled doctor’s children who sank speedboats and wore Lacoste and Ralph Lauren to play in the dirt. These children were completely different; nothing could have braced me for the change in culture I experienced with them. There were regular fights between the children, they cursed like sailors and openly took out anger on any readily available source. Then there was Braheem. Braheem had it harder than most of the other children for several reasons. Out of all the children, Braheem was the best behaved. At night, when I had commuted back to my safe suburb of Media, I would lie in bed and ponder on Braheem. Why was he different? Why did his eyes beam joy and love despite his harsh upbringing? I watched him. There he was, his black fingers were coated in white glue, his mind was working away, turning a new idea for his popsicle invention over and over in his head. He was incredibly bright for a child of his age. He noticed things the other children didn’t notice. I remember thinking to myself that this boy, if given the chance, had a future. He had a chance to get off the streets and break the homeless cycle on his family.
That was the summer I realized there is nothing a parent or a mentor can do to make a child choose a correct path. I believed in Braheem, I knew he was smart. I knew he could go to college. I also knew I was the only one that took the time to look into his eyes and see more than another hoodlum in the making. Braheem, raised in those conditions would one day come to some sort of crossroads. Which way he would go was up to him. This made me sad. A child’s freewill will get you every time.
*
I had never held an infant before that moment. I had always been too appalled by them. I saw right past their chubby cheeks and spit bubbles and burps that made all the other girls make stupid noises at them. I saw how they monopolized a mother’s life, I saw how they ruined sexy in a woman and I was not interested. And yet, there I was, holding one. I had refused to look him in the eye for the first ten minutes, but something called my attention to them. They were the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen and they were staring right at my furrowed brow and me. The four month old knew how I felt. I could tell. His parents swore keeping a baby was the same as keeping any child, and they promised they had written everything down that I would ever need to know. And just like that, they were out the door for a long night on Dickson and I was alone with it.
They knew I had no experience, yet they hired me anyhow. “We hear great things, we know you’ll get a handle with Alex in no time. Besides, everything is written down.” My arm was soar now from holding the plump curly boy as I peered over the kitchen counter at on sheet of paper covered in blue Sharpie notes. My survival guide.
Twenty minutes later those blue eyes were flooded with tears and those plump cheeks were an angry shade of red. He screamed louder than I had ever heard a baby scream before, but looking back I figure that’s just because I had never actually had one in my arms while it was screaming before. I consulted my survival guide. The sheet of paper said nothing about how to stop crying. I thought back to movies and cartoons where they have the crier a bottle. Yes, there were directions for his bottle on it. I sat him down in his Exersaucer and went at it. The Excersaucer was an amazing contraption to me. It was the kind of thing that I never had when I was little because stimulating a child’s mind with mirrors, buttons and activities that taught the alphabet and colors was not high on anybody’s priority yet and that made me feel old. “Sexy is leaving already!” I announced over his screams as I slid back and for the through the huge kitchen, dumping in scoops of rice cereal and formula, warming water-too complicated.
He snuggled in my arms, noisily sucking away at his bottle, staring at me as if to say, “Duh you idiot, of coarse I was hungry!” And I stared back, embarrassed by the fact that I was a 21 year old female that didn’t know how to assemble a bottle. The kitchen looked like I had been making anthrax in it, a small explosion by the sink and microwave. My jeans had white stains all over them and my black t-shirt had powder all over it from the formula. Somewhere in the anthrax explosion I had lost my long necklaces and bracelets, but the little boy had stopped crying. He seemed to melt in my arms. His eyes got heavy and he was falling asleep. Was that normal?
By the time Alex’s parents noisily stumbled through the door, he was asleep. I had hid all evidence of anthrax and managed to do their dishes and fold laundry, too. They paid a wonderful handling fee and I was out the door and in my car speeding away in no time.
As I drove, I reflected on the night. I came to the conclusion that I was the one who should have been paying by the hour for the night. Granted, I didn’t understand everything about small children. But I certainly wouldn’t look at them like a disease ever again.
*
The eight-year old boy that lives below me in my apartment complex is in the army. I know this, because early in the morning he exits his parent’s two-bedroom studio and looks around with big brown eyes, soaking in his field for the day. With his hands crossed behind his back he stands quietly in his red and white striped shirt, stained with Fun Dip and Kool-Aid and watches. When he is positive he is under the cover of secrecy, he breaks into a run towards the stairs. He grabs the railing and swings himself up onto the brick divider between the stairs and the sidewalk and begins to bark orders in a hushed voice while climbing up the side of the railing. He carries on by dropping back down about 5 feet and starting all over again. Occasionally, dangling from the bars and sprawling about heroically, he will shout out something along the lines of, “Move! Move! Move!” It’s then that he drops to the ground in a roll and combat crawls behind the hedges and spies on the sleepy morning dog walkers and cars passing by with dewy windows. He holds his hand to his mouth, clicks his tongue and makes hissing noises to simulate the radio he is transmitting information back to the main base in, only pausing to drop the imaginary radio and pick up his stick-gun that he strategically hid there the day before. He aims it at a passing “tank” and makes the perfect machine gun “tht-tht-tht-tht” towards the unsuspecting vehicle.
I take another sip of my strong coffee and cock my head in amazement. Little boys seem to have a built in noise maker that little girls do not have- I know I could never replicate the sounds of war coming from his mouth.
I realize I am one of few adults that would rather watch a boy play army than watch television. I am grateful that I can look upon children without disgust. They are not ankle biters or curtain climbers to me. They are the future. They are a blank slate walking around, waiting, watching for someone to imitate. Some are loud, openly crying out for attention. Others are angry, hiding their need to be noticed. Others just stare at you, expecting to be loved. Whatever their approach may be, they will always assume it in one way or another. The mind of the child has always fascinated me.
I’ve worked with children for as long as I can remember. I’ve watched the rich children play on go-carts and jet skis and I’ve watched the poor play in the streets with marbles and jump ropes. There are so many different ways to raise a child, so many different ways to shape their personalities and beliefs but one thing always turns out the same in each child; their extreme need to be loved and noticed.