Adult Deeds Grow like Adult Weeds

Emergency Alert! I was gone for almost 24 hours exactly and my Hydrangea went into shock. The wilt factor here is at 90%. I’ve been away from home on an insane retreat with what felt like 100’s screaming middle school students (really it was less than 30) and this is what I come home to?! An almost dead plant. Nice. Again it seems like water may have been the solution as ole’ planty has perked up in the leaf department. I know it was warm this weekend, but really? You were soaked in water when I left. I couldn’t really give you more or you would have drowned. The audacity. This confirms my suspicions though: I need a roommate because this problem wouldn’t have existed if I had an awesome, loafs-on-the-weekends-and-helps-me-take-care-of-my-plant-roommate. Engage finding roommate sequence: Now.

Now here’s a story. It’s not brief so plan to be here for awhile.

As previously mentioned, I was on a retreat with middle school students this weekend. A little background information: I run a program for middle and high schoolers. I won’t say the name of the organization in which I work because: A. Headquarters will descend on this blog like harpies and find a reason to destroy it and B. The organization is suffocating me right now and I don’t want to besmirch my safe little blog world with its name.

Back to my story now please. If you have ever been around middle school students (or if you were one) you know that they are insane. I don’t know if there is even a real word to describe them exactly. Their actions merit a succession of synchronized jaw-dropping moments with my co-workers and I because every moment is a little more incredulous than the last. If you thought the hormonal roller coaster was painful to go through, it is even more painful to watch. 

I for one was not a fan of being ages 11-14. I can’t really say that this is unique, so I won’t. But for me, being around middle school aged people makes me nervous. Maybe it’s because I was a wreck in middle school and I’m projecting my bad feelings about middle school on them, rendering me paralyzed and unable to make basic human interactions. (Maybe this is bad practice, but this is my blog so I’ll do as I please.) Or maybe it’s because I don’t know how to interact with them. I am a shy and introverted person who doesn’t like to make conversation with weirdies (aka middle school). I don’t like to make cliché statements to people and try to do it as little as possible. With middle schoolers it’s difficult to do that because there are so many cliché sentiments to choose from. And most of those statements come from some sort of experience and I feel like I have very little to lend to anyone except “you’re life sucks now but it will get better once you can drive”. That is not positive or helpful. They are also just difficult to have a conversation with. Since part of the creed/honor code of being a pre-teen or teen is selfishness and vanity they don’t often reciprocate conversations. Having a one sided talk with a person who may start running around in circles at any moment is not my idea of a good time.

It usually goes something like this:

Me: In a voice that I hope sounds sincere, How are you?!?!??!??!?!?

Selfish Middle Schooler: Fine.

Me: What have you been up to?

SMS: Nothing.

Me: How is school?

SMS: I hate my teacher.

Me: Why?

SMS: Because she made me do math.

Me: That sucks, I hate math too!

SMS:

Me: So, what kinds of things do you like to do?

SMS: Basketball

Me: I’m not very good at basketball.

SMS:

Me: Do you have any siblings?

SMS: Yes (then something in her or his brain explodes and they see a friend/bug/nothing at all and start freaking out and running around)

Making conversation with someone shouldn’t feel so desperate. So I try to interact with them as little as possible.  Some of you may be thinking that it’s possible that they are intimidated by my so-called “authority” and don’t know how to talk to adults. False. They have no fear of me. The only thing between a human stampede and me is usually access to some sort of snack item. Some of you may also be thinking that I should just treat them as you would any other person. To those of you who are thinking that I say, “shut your traps.” Because you have no idea what you are talking about.

The actual point of this post:

This may have actually been an adult defining moment for me. As I’ve said several times throughout this post, I went on a retreat this weekend. With kids. It was fun, but exhausting. There was a point where I saw light at the end of the tunnel.

The event:

I went back to the cabin to brush my teeth. For one precious moment I was, gloriously, shamelessly, and resplendently alone. The peace took on surreal quality that one could describe as “secret tranquility”. I was about to leave this happy place and rejoin the chaos crew, but a tiny voice called my name.

“Sarah” she said.

A dreaded statement if there ever was one. (The children don’t often refer to me by name) I looked down from my enormous height and saw one of the more nasty, sneaky and defiant students we have with her t-shirt pulled down over her thighs.

“What’s up?” (trying to be nonchalant)

“I need a pair of pants out of my bag”

My brain explodes. We had packed all of the kid’s stuff into our luggage van after breakfast to cut down on the not being able to sprint out of the camp at end of the day situation. Genius right? Wrong. The children didn’t seem to understand that if they needed something like, their inhaler for example, that they would not have a ton of access to it. Maybe it’s our fault for not explaining that to them. Because sometimes we forget that, although they act like “big kids”, middle school students are actually just elementary students with bad attitudes. But they wouldn’t have listened anyway so the point is moot.

We had just helped the camp clean up the grounds a bit so my first thought was that she considered her pants “dirty”. I was about to tell her that there was no way in hell I was getting her a clean pair of pants because she had dirt on them.

My other thought was “ohgodohgodohgodohgod.” For a split second I thought this girl had gotten her “moon time” and I was going to have to have the “talk” with her. This is the last thing on earth that I ever want to do. Gross and also I didn’t want to be the person she remembered later in life telling her about “the joys of womanhood” and "feminine hygiene" (which is a phrase that when you hear it doesn't imply anything about hygiene, but how unhygienic you are) I would have had to tell her that this is a “special” time in every “young lady’s” life and that she could now use her “intuition” to figure out if people are lying to her. This obviously is a load of bull spit and the only reason we keep perpetuating this myth is so we don’t all cry ourselves to sleep ever night.

“Why do you need a clean pair of pants?”

“Because one of my friends made me laugh so hard that I peed on myself.”

It was in that moment that I knew that I was being punished for enjoying my 45 seconds of solitude. Only a person without any mercy would have said no. It was also sort of touching. I mean she obviously trusted me. (yeah I was the only adult around, but still). And I kind of fell in love with the fact that she laughed so hard that she peed her pants. That’s one of the points of this program. Kids get to be with their friends in a safe environment. And that’s one of the beautiful things about being a kid (or even a human in general) sometimes you laugh so hard that you pee on yourself. So I told her I would go find her bag and bring her some clean clothes.

The next part is not as cute. The bag I had to find was a super large, wheeled piece of luggage that I could have packed said child into. And it was underneath another bag that was the same size. Did I mention that we only went for the night? So I had to climb into a boiling hot van, over mountains of stuff to access other stuff, lift one huge bag over the seat (I am not strong whatsoever) flip her bag over, and then find clean clothing. When I brought it to her, she did not say thank you.

I suppose the point of this story is that is something an adult does. It’s not the defining thing, but I’m sure it comes up a lot. Sometimes you have to do something that you know is going to suck because it will help someone else. Even if you don’t get a thank you.