I took them up on that offer in a heartbeat, as did one
other counselor who was having a rough time and wanted to leave. I was looking forward to three weeks without
the responsibility of having a cabin, just running activities, eating at the
“big kid’s” table, going to staff coffee night, and other things that I didn’t
get to do as a counselor. I spent part
of the first week repainting the cabins with Kodak and Paladin. On Wednesday, as I was using a knife to
scrape paint out of the tip of a roller, I poked myself in the hand with
it. They tell me that my first response
was: “Well, that’s not good.” They
turned around and blood was everywhere.
The cut was only a quarter inch wide, and maybe a half inch deep on the
back of my left thumb, but it bled like none other. It had slowed down an hour or two later, but
hadn’t stopped, so the nurse insisted that I go get it checked out by a doctor
that afternoon. I made the mistake of
going with Paladin, whose primary contribution to the process was asking them
to give me a second tetanus shot so he could get a better photograph of the
process. They scrubbed it out
excessively, which was painful, and may have done further damage. It resumed bleeding of course, but they
eventually got me bandaged up in a way that even left most of my hand usable.
The next day, while I was working at the ropes course, one
of Darrick’s young campers got stuck on the ladder jump. And by “got stuck” I mean that he was on the
top step and refused to come down, with a death grip on the main wire. Sunshine was belaying him, and had worked
with him for a few minutes before seeking assistance. There were quite a few staff members around,
so we soon had a whole group around. Darrick
tried talking him down for an hour, without much progress. There was another belay system available that
accessed the same ladder, so Canary saw an opportunity to help with her first
rescue. Since she was better at dealing
with young children than I was, especially crying ones, I agreed to give her a
shot. I belayed her as she climbed up to
talk with him. That did not solve the
problem, and she eventually deferred the verbal approach to Hercules who was
trying to take the lead from the ground.
I have no idea how Sunshine did it, but she didn’t move an inch for
hours, while I took a few more liberties.
With a staff member on my line, and well positioned on the ladder, I
eventually sat down. They were at it for
over an hour before I decided to bring Canary down, since that clearly wasn’t
working, and she was wearing sandals, which were not protecting her feet from
the wire very well. I decided that I
should go up myself, and got Ox to belay me.
As I began to ascend the ladder, I started talking to the kid at the top, in what became a trademark BullsEye line. “Do you know who I am? I am BullsEye, from the big kid camp. I am here because it is time for you to come down.” I climbed up to him and we had a little chat. He was afraid of the swinging aspect of going down, and I assured him I could minimize that effect. I did not in any way pry him off of the wire, but I did make sure that once his one hand had let go, that the wire was not in reach for him to grasp again. Once he had both hands on the belay rope, I slowly moved the line out toward the anchor. Eventually I was hanging in the air with my left hand one the wire, and my right hand seven feet out, letting go of his belay line. He only swung another foot or two, and came down fine. I expected to have to figure out how to descend from that position, when Ox just pulled on the rope, popping me back onto the foot cable. There are benefits to having a ridiculously strong belayer. It wasn’t until later that I realized the significance of the fact that my injured thumb had managed to hold both of us without failing.
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