Dear Boundless Families:
When there is so much to write about, and you don’t know where to begin, I tend use the most recent event as a launching point.
Ashley Strange (AKA Stranger), my partner in crime in keeping tabs on everyone, and perhaps the only other mature human being on the property, bursts into my office and says we have to change the code to all the locks on our property.
A savvy student in OE, for fun, picked the 3-digit code. Now I know there are only 999 possibilities, but still. This is the same kid who baked an apple pie for everyone two days ago. Just cuz.
Another kid in that group, Gage, caught a pike, and taught four of his boys how to clean and consume it. Now the five of them suffer from Hyperactive Fishing Disorder.
I must confess I was a tad worried about OE’s eclectic mix of acne prone humans on day one. But they are finding themselves. Somehow sore backs and shoulders are magically healing. There is no need to masquerade anxiety anymore. Trust is starting to happen.
OE is on a mini one-night canoe trip now.
Yet another confession is that I haven’t bothered to visit the 4uers. I can’t stand them really. They have bought into Kevin Klin’s (their trip leader) perpetual disco regime. In lockstep, they start dancing at the slightest provocation. Stranger rode her bike by them when they were hiking yesterday. They parted like the Red Sea for her, and as she rode by, they gave her the collective heebie jeebies with their dangling fingers. The final straw happened on Sunday when I popped in for lunch and this brusque dude is solo dancing and invites me to join in.
I am embarrassed to admit that one 4uer brought up a board game called Secret Hitler. His goal, I have been told, was to get his peers addicted. On this he has succeeded. It is a satirical play on deception and politics that has the entire class obsessed.
Basically a 4Uers life up here is: reading, dancing, writing, dancing, Secret Hitler, dancing, arguments in persuasion, dancing, slam poetry, dancing, Secret Hitler, Essays, dancing.
You paid good money for this program parents. The truth is that I ignore the 4uers because they are just so darn amazing and need absolutely nothing from me.
On to mixed English. It is this group that has captured my heart, for I have witnessed subtle acts of greatness all over the place.
We have kids so sharp-minded, and so sharing of their acute sense of prose, that they uplift everyone around them. We also have 4 kids who struggle terribly with English. I see them reading to each other, in earnest, supporting each other to click with the words. They mean business. They are astounding themselves. The entire class lends a hand when they can.
There is a fair share of anxiety in this crew, like everywhere else these days. One young lad responded to my offer to hang out. He comes in, twitching, nervous but with an open heart, and declares he doesn’t like being in English but is choosing to stay because he has to finish what he starts. He does not have a solid history with this virtue. But because of his connection to a few key staff and kids, he has chosen to hang in.
I talk to him about how suffering is part of living. Sometimes suffering is to endure, not to avoid.
He then asks with a face so innocent I almost collapse in its cuteness,”Does enduring mean finish what you start? Am I doing this?
“Yes”, I say, but you aint done s…t until you actually finish.
We then pick raspberries, a first time for him. He scurries back to his group. Haven’t heard from, or about him since.
Rain finally came today. A real blessing.
Until next time,
Steven
