The days are just packed.
When I had campers, ages and ages ago, I used to love to tell them that. I grew up reading those Calvin and Hobbes paperbacks; I think Josh used to get one every Christmas, and let David and I read them when he was done. I remember going through them, cover to cover, one by one, everytime I was sick and missed school. A couple of times, David and Bryan Kaestner and I tried to play Calvinball in Bryan's back yard. It didn't work that well. I kept making up new rules on the spot, and they kept hating me for it. Maybe we played it only once, because it mostly sucked. Basically, it probably would have worked better had D. and B. been stuffed animals, but I can't complain because they were good for loads of other stuff that pretend animals couldn't have done, like paddleboating and bike-riding and knocking free candy down from the vending machines in the Weatherwood Center by tipping them or running into them real hard.
But I was talking about campers. We always had full days at Michindoh, sunrise to sunset (and beyond), so any other job working with kids sort of feels like a breather. I remember my first week at the Boys & Girls Club in Montana, coming home after 7 hours and feeling like, "I can't believe they're paying me for this!" It's the same way here in Rutland. Though today was a full day (9-7:30), it just seemed to breeze by. Though by 9 o'clock pm, I'm seriously ready to fall asleep. (I did so last night at nine, but I'm trying not to be a wuss tonight and at least make it to eleven.)
So, anyways, tonight was the big Halloween parade in Rutland. Literally everyone in town showed up for it. The lowest count I heard tonight said that at least 10,000 people were lined up along the parade route, which snaked through and around downtown. Not bad for a community of maybe 17,000. Every kid and one out of every four adults had a costume of some sort on. The parade itself lasted for two hours, float after float from every business, church and organization in town. We had a few kids from the Club march with us, handing out candy along the parade route -- a princess, a pirate, a plumber, a skeleton, a fairy, Maid Marian, a commando, two witches, two serial killers from that movie Scream and myself, Stephen Colbert, in a ten dollar suit from the Salvation Army and a Colbert mask printed from Forbes.com. Honestly, we were the most awesomest group ever. Seriously. We were all like, don't you mess with us. And everyone else was like, wow, we want to be you, and perhaps worship you for all eternity in the afterlife. And then we gave them candy, and they wet their pants in the awesomeness that was our awesome presence. I kid you not. We ruled.
And tomorrow, we get to do it all over again, but in a totally different way.