Camp Twin Lakes VII

One of the camps that came through here recently was a camp put on by a local healthcare organization. It was a study that put overweight children in an positive active environment with healthy food for a week, then follow up a couple months and see how they're doing. The hope is that the kids would all participate in the same physical activity available elsewhere, but would be doing it with other kids like them and would gain the confidence to join in activities back at home.

The dietitian was this intense little lady from somewhere in Europe. She planned foods like butternut-squash ravioli... things that under normal consensual circumstances would be fine and probably even delicious. However, when forced upon kids who were not used to these kinds of foods in the first place, it was not pretty. One girl was legitimately crying over the ravioli.

Just like in the movie Heavy Weights, the counselors had their stash of sweets. Since I lived in the staff cabins I did not need to hide it, but the poor volunteers who lived in the cabins did. There's a refrigerator in the dining hall that usually holds extra milk and stuff like that; this particular week it mysteriously contained piles of mozzarella cheese and bags of fun-sized candy bars. When nobody was looking, the counselors would sneak over to get their fix.

The last day of camp, Miss Tiff the dining hall director handed out cookies after dinner to all the kids. One asked if there was any milk; since it had all been put up since breakfast, she pointed him to the refrigerator in the corner. I knew what was in there, but I really wanted to see what was going to happen.

The little guy marched over to the refrigerator, and had his chubby little arm reaching for the door before one of the volunteers saw him. It was like a slow-motion action scene - the staffer yelled "NOOOOOO!!" at the top of her lungs and started shouting at the boy to stay away from the fridge. Other campers got the idea something good was in there, so they all got up and started moving across across the room, the fastest I had seen them go as a unit the whole week. The volunteer got up from her seat and started running; at that point it was just a battle of the wills. Somehow, she got to the refrigerator before it was actually ever opened. Throwing herself in front of the children like a human shield, she was able to get turn them away without them ever finding out what was in it.

Epic.