Personal Narrative: To Kill A Mockingbird Camp Experience

During the summer, I go to Girl Scout camp and work as a counselor-in-training. We shadow counselors, teach little girls how to perform flag, organize and perform the weekly campfire, and lead camp songs, among other things. When I was younger, my favorite part of camp was none of those things. Instead, it was the interactions with the older girls and counselors-- I wanted to be just like them. I followed them around and managed the younger girls in an attempt to seem responsible and told them proudly of my straight A’s and camping trips where I’d, “done all this fire-making stuff before.” I couldn’t get the fire lit in the aftermath of that unfortunate boast, but I used two entire boxes of matches trying to light a fire just last summer, so I can forgive my eight-year-old self.
As I’ve aged my camp experience has grown up with me. My premature bouts with responsibility turned into real responsibility somewhere, and I became someone that little me’s follow around, on the way to the lake and the tennis courts and a better adulthood. It makes me wonder-- do other counselors feel the same yawning responsibility when a girl shyly admits that her favorite song is the donkey song, and would I please sing it before dinner tonight? When girls call them to set up hula hoop houses or play a
It’s a concept I find easy to put into context within the confines of summer camp, but children are no more affected by counselors than they are by teachers and youth pastors and parents, even older children. We all have a responsibility. There will always be kids who find it easy to brush off the failings of adults, but there will also always be the kids like me, who cried when adults raised their voice and wanted nothing but their attention even then. They need us to be the best versions of ourselves. We need us to be the best versions of