My conversations online with both H and P had continued for
the rest of spring. H and I had a solid
friendship at that point, with fairly clear boundaries. I was quite intrigued by P, but it was a
little harder to get to know her. As
someone who is conscious of his own subjective bias, I am always looking for
quantifiable evidence to back up my interpretation of the less tangible aspects
of relationships. As such, I was real
curious to see if P would ever take any initiative in our interactions, or was
she just putting up with my consistent attention. It was a little past four weeks into summer
before I observed that she had spoken first in one of our exchanges, which I
figured was some sort of progress. I have learned through the series of steps that progressed
since then, that those changes are probably more accurately interpreted as
indicators of her individual social development, as opposed to signals that her
feelings towards me or our relationship were changing. But I had no cognition of that idea at the
time, and might have been slightly biased by hope as well.
My last cabin for the summer included one camper who had an
obvious crush on P. I secretly found
that amusing for a variety of reasons, but at least he had good taste. He was very impressed with her knowledge, and he totally idolized her. Somehow
I ended up helping run the carnival that week, even though I was a
counselor. Once they announced that the
prize for winning events was to vote for which staff member gets pied in the
face at the end of the week, my camper asked if P had ever “won.” When I told him she hadn’t, he decided he
wanted to make that happen. He enlisted
my assistance, for whatever that was worth, and I was amused and curious to see
what he could do. There was probably
more Wild Oak involvement in that carnival than any in a long time, since he
was able to convince all the horsemanship girls, as well as my entire cabin to
assist in his campaign.
It turns out “so-and-so
has never been pied before!” is a very
effective way to make them a target. I
was fairly surprised when there were mobs of little Buckhorn campers chanting
that a short time later. I asked one of
them if they even knew who P was, and they had no idea, but they wanted to see
her get pied. I figured P would
appreciate that experience about as much as I had the year before. It’s nice to know that people notice you
enough to even bother, but the experience still just sucks. I figured that it would be ideal for her to
get that level of attention, to know that she wasn’t invisible or immune, but
without the messy result. It was a long
shot, but if I could get her in the last spot, she would be called up, but not
pied. So knowing who the usual popular
targets were, I started reminding the Buckhorn campers of some other names more
familiar to them. That reversed the
trend, and I am proud to say that in the only time I have ever gotten involved
in that process, I was probably directly responsible for 3 of the 4 names
announced later that night. I just hoped
I had gotten them in the right order.
The next morning, we all headed to the horseshow, and I was in position
to get a good picture regardless of the outcome. As it turns out, it worked out
perfectly. All of the attention and
suspense was there without the mess, and she seemed pretty excited at the
result. My camper was initially a bit
crestfallen that she “lost,” but I pointed out that he had done an impressive job even getting her “on the podium” for the
first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment