It’s that time of the week again and boy do I have an awesome story this week. Sometimes when your in a good place it’s easy to be more aware of where you are than how you actually got there. In the immortal words of Talking Heads (Thanks Jeff) “How did I get here?”. What, or who is it that set you on the path to get to where you are right now? Have you thanked them? Well…this is lifted direct from a facebook post last week.

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In 2010 I was at camp and we were asked to write a letter at staff training to that one person that helped us be there at camp thanking them. Mine was to a young boy that I looked after in Australia back in 2006. He was 6 years old and he changed my life. At that point I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do. I spent 4 months with this kid playing “cops and robbers”, building forts in the living room, making up the craziest stories about wirligigs and monsterflies as well as helping him with his temper, attention span, and self-control. All things I never even knew I could do. He inspired me to work with children as a career and started me on the path to finding summer camp and Frost Valley. Well, I haven’t seen or spoken to him in 5 years…until today. Skype is without doubt the greatest creation of the digital age. What I thought would be an awkward 5 minute “Hi, how are you?” turned into almost an hour and a half of spirit lifting laughter and heart warming love. He even showed me the friendship bracelet I made him all that time ago. I almost cried. After telling him that he was the reason I work with kids he smiled the widest smile ever and simply said “So when do you get here, tomorrow, good!”. If only it were that easy to get to Australia!

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Do you have someone you need to thank?

So someone asked me for the story behind the photo below and so Tuesday’s will now be known as a day of tales and stories from inside of my head and out of my mind.

The first of which takes us back to the summer of 2009 and a cabin in the woods known as Hyde and Watson. I was returning for my second year as Village Chief (Unit Leader) of a village of 10/11 year old boys and thought I’d seen it all. Then there was Boy A (name changed…obviously). Boy A was a runner. For those of you in the know, this means that he regularly decided to just up and leave, walking away from the group or me the, supposedly, adult in charge. During this time he would completely shut-down and refuse to speak to anyone.

At first this was not something I was accustomed to. Campers listened to me. I was the Chief, not feared but respected. Who was this camper to walk away? Well that attitude got me nowhere fast. No matter how much effort and attention I aimed towards him he would just keep on walking or, if stopped, just sit and do a great impression of the rock that would later symbolize our relationship. No movement, no sound.

One day, during a rest hour in the creek BOY A got one of his shoes, that he refused to take off, wet and shut down completely. Now something awesome about the rocks in this particular creek is that you can form a rudimentary paint with them and can be used as writing implements. All I did was make a smiley face on one side, and wrote “I’m here” on the other. That was it. Nothing magical. Nothing special. Just a small gesture that was the spark in building a wonderful and understanding relationship between us.

Rocks became “our thing” over the next few days. He had one that he would place in my hand if he needed to talk. I would leave short messages on rocks that I placed on his bunk during my time off. Over time BOY A opened up to both my co-counselor and me more vocally and began to form friendships with the other campers. The rocks took a back seat.

That was until the very last day of camp when BOY A was going home. He presented me with the rock that is pictured below and with tears in eyes thanked me for “listening”. I never saw BOY A again as he never returned to camp, much to my dismay. I hope he realizes how important a lesson I took from my time with him.

“Listening isn’t always about being active in opening your ears to what’s being said. Sometimes it’s opening your heart to what’s not.”

If you do, you to can “rock” it at camp. (Sorry I had to put that in.)