How can you dock me days when I've been teaching for years?

Shuli: How can you expect me to overturn my schedule for something I can learn on my own time?

Mrs. Blumenthal: You need to prioritize your commitment to your year-round, full-time job.

Shuli

“Mrs. Flam? Mrs. Flam! Oh, good, there you are!”

It was past 11 p.m., but the head staff headquarters was buzzing when a counselor — I think she’s from Bunk Hei, but I’m not sure — burst in. “A camper just threw up all over the place and now she won’t stop crying, can you come?”

I was already on my feet. “Sure.” Poor kid, it’s awful being sick in camp. If I could give her some mothering and help the counselor figure out the linens and the mess and whatever, everything would calm down and hopefully they’d still get something of a night’s sleep.

The radio clipped onto my skirt crackled. “Mrs. Flam? Are you there?”

“Just on my way somewhere, what’s up?”

“Mini crisis, Laya Pearl has a family emergency and needs to leave camp, we need to figure out a replacement counselor for her bunk ASAP, any ideas?”

I paused at the entrance of the darkened bunkhouse. “I’ll be with you in 20 minutes, okay?”

Twenty minutes turned into 40 before Bunk Hei was all settled, and by the time I met the head counselors down in the dining room, it was midnight.

“So, Laya Pearl,” I said.

It was camp. The night was yet young.

I love my job.

The truth is, I love my year-round job, too. I’m a high school teacher, and I teach several subjects to ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. I’m also a tenth-grade mechaneches. But camp is a whole different experience, a chance to get to know the girls in a whole different way. I love the country, the summer air, the outdoors, the fun, the cheering, the energy. I even love the adrenaline-filled late nights and the coffee-filled early mornings, sometimes without much sleep in between.

I guess you could say camp is my place. It’s always been, really.

My kids are total staff kids, from the start. They love hanging out in camp, love the attention they get from the girls, run around with the mothers’ helpers from morning till night. Which is good, because I’m running around from morning till night, too, especially during the first and last weeks of camp.

It was a couple of weeks into first half when I got the email. Or maybe it had come into my inbox already, but I hadn’t seen it? I couldn’t remember when I’d last had a moment to sit down in the office and check the computer.