We shared our site with another summer camp group last week. It made things kind of crowded, with nearly 300 kids all coming and going. It was a good program though. Apparently the kids were all children of migrant workers - not the kind of people who usually get the opportunity to go to camp during the summer.

This Saturday, I got the opportunity to get some overtime pay by cleaning up the site for the symphony camp that is going to be there until next Friday or so. One of the biggest messes I had to clean up was left behind by the migrant camp leaders. Apparently, they left a box of miscellaneous stuff behind - folders, rosters, craft supplies, posters explaining about the hazards of Poison Oak, Black Widows, and venomous snakes, and a number of bag lunches. Perhaps somebody should have made a poster explaining the hazards of leaving bag lunches outside over night, but then again they weren't the ones who had to clean up the mess. As anybody who has ever spent any time outside camping will tell you, there are animals out in them thar woods who love bag lunches more than campers do. I'm guessing it was Raccoons. The bag lunches, of course, were all torn open and scattered all over the place.

That wasn't the most noxious mess though. The refrigerator in the staff room gets that prize. The staff room changes location from week to week, based on what other camps are sharing the site. The staff room we use during the school year is currently full of cubbies for campers to put their belongings in. We had been using the rooms reserved for the classroom teachers during the year, but the other camp took it over last week, so now we're in the room used by the teenaged "cabin leaders" during the school year. Confused yet? Anyway, somebody brought the refrigerator from the old staff room to the new and didn't plug it back in. It sat in there like that for a week until we carefully put it outside, deftly avoiding the brownish liquid dripping from the bottom of the door. This weekend, feeling brave and looking for something to do, I opened it and, waving the suddenly appearing cloud of flies away, cleaned it out. Most of it went into the compost pile. I feel that I really earned my overtime pay. It makes me think about all of the people out there (including myself at times) who just figure that somebody else will come along and take care of things.

"Hey, don't worry, Bob, the trash fairies will clean that big ol' mess up for you overnight. Hell, they'll even brush your teeth for you if you forget. Take it easy. Relax. Responsibility is for suckers."

At home, it's quiet, except for the constant hum of the fans.