The rest of Day Two

My favorite sign of the day:

NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY. PLEASE SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I’ve seen plenty of “swim at your own risk” signs, but none of them really sounded like invitations to do so. In any event, it’s nice to be polite.

After dinner, most of the kids gravitated toward karaoke. I’ve successfully avoided karaoke for most of my life, but it was really fun to watch kids I know get up and perform this ridiculous stuff. There was a pool party going on at the same time, so every time on of our kids was singing everyone would pile out of the pool and into the hallway, wrapped in towels. Two of our kids made it to the final round, one of whom sang “Hey Jude” (inexplicably, the 7 minute version with all the na-na-na’s) with background vocals by his fellow students and the other sang “Summer Loving,” again, with the boys singing the “wella wella wella” part and the girls doing their “tell me mores.” By this time, there was about ¼ inch of water on the floor and everyone is dancing and sliding everywhere. Ultimately, one of our boys won and celebrated by sitting on and falling through a glass-topped table. It was really quite spectacular.

Then it was everybody back in the pool for some beach ball volleyball until midnight, when it was time for ice cream. Predictably, this did not aid in settling everybody down and going to bed. It was a smaller crowd in the hallway, with lots of people signing yearbooks, playing music or cards, or just talking. Then the security guard came and it was time to insert everyone into their rooms.

Let me take a moment to discuss the whole chaperone thing. I’ve chaperoned the school ski trip for the last 3 years, but aside from that I’ve never participated in any of the out-of-school activities that take place around here. It never would have occurred to me to do this if it wasn’t this particular group of kids. I know they wanted me along because they like me, but I have this sneaking suspicion that part of it is that I’m not really inclined to be strict. Maybe it’s my own general issues with authority (I am a child of the 60’s remember) and maybe it’s the giving people the benefit of the doubt thing, or maybe (and I certainly hope not) it’s because I hope people will like me more if I’m “nice,” but I’m not exactly Mr. Discipline.

This puts me in a ticklish position from time to time and brings up the occasional slight discomfort about just what is my relationship with the kids. I’ve thought about this a lot, probably more than I should, because there are a bunch of kids that I relate to as if they were friends, at least when I’m not grading their tests. And it’s my nature to always want to know exactly where I stand. I speak openly and honestly about my life and I think they respond in turn. But we’re not exactly friends in the regular sense of the word. I guess maybe I’m like an uncle. Most everyone has a uncle they like. More fun than a parent, but still an adult. I’ll go with that for the moment.

So the kids go to their rooms and Uncle Frank and the rest of the chaperones do a head count. The security guard settles into his chair and we go in to our rooms. At 2:15 AM, I get a phone call saying “This is the manager and could you please come outside?” These aren’t really the word one wants to hear. What’s up? Well one group of boys is trying to run over to the girls’ room and another guy was running around the hall with a lampshade on his head. So part of me is thinking “Lampshade? That’s kind of refreshingly old school. So chiche’ it’s not cliché.” And part of me is thinking, “Whoever it is I am so calling him 60 Watt for the rest of his life.” And part of me is really irritated.

We fan out into the boys’ rooms and my line is, “I don’t even want to talk to people I like at 2:15 in the morning and certainly not hotel managers” and I basically tell them I really don’t want to have to do this again tonight and yes I did think that this and all the other ideas they didn’t do were pretty funny, though not in this context. And then I go to bed and fall asleep sometime around 3.