Summer Camp, Part Three: Geronimo junior staff- Chapter Two

Today I continue the narrative of my summers as a junior staff member at the BSA-run Camp Geronimo. It's best to read yesterday's before getting into this.

Where I left off yesterday, I had failed to catch on at the Commissioner's Shack (the department I most preferred) due to a dearth of openings. After that initial setback, I was disheartened, but had more interviews to go through. Each of them was as tough as that one, but only because I set them up to be in my mind. As I said, the interviewer in that case had been a childhood friend I didn't recognize. The others were people who turned out to warrant no such fear as what I felt when I sat across a table from them and justified my worth as an employee. I try to remember that feeling whenever I'm in such a position as they were then.

The place I wound up with was the Nature Lodge. What was interesting was that I left the interviews thinking that I had been made a CIT at the discretion of the area director, when in fact he simply didn't realize how old I was. That was straightened out, and it was exhilarating to think that in some sense I had  become a man and was about to make my own way in the world as an independent being. I had been away from family for no longer than three weeks previously, and was not then drawing a salary.

That salary was not exactly princely. I think the first year I was making something like 75 dollars a week for a full time job. It was more like a stipend than anything, and I don't believe I touched that money for a while. In fact, the checks remained un-cashed until the end of the summer, since I had no means to deposit them at that time. In later years, the young boys were able to sign their checks over to the camp store for cash. By that time, I was able to go to the bank in town as I liked, and preferred to deposit the money. That didn't stop me from spending it freely like it was cash, of course.

The next thing after the interview was training. This also felt like a really big deal. The main things I remember were team-building exercises and watching a video about sexual harassment. It was helpful at least for the first purpose, given that we had not met each other before. Getting familiar with those I would be working with added to the anticipation of the coming summer. It strikes me as interesting now to think that the CITs who would be working the first half really only saw the CITS for the second half that one day. In any event, the day served to build esprit de corps well. Even the ordeal of sitting through the antiquated, shoddily-made videos bound us together in a sense.

When all that was through, I went on with school, and waited for the end of May so that I might finally embark upon what then looked to be the greatest adventure and personal development in my life. The waiting was unpleasant, but was not for long.