Posted: October 11, 2008

 

We have been walking all day, the day has been going well and we are lucky enough to be sleeping in a place that doesn’t require night watch. We are all able to sleep.

At about 3am I am awoken by owls. Maybe 3 or 4 calling to each other in the trees. They are getting excited and the noise they’re making is insane. It sounds like monsters being murdered.

The noise wakes the other two staff.

“The kids must be shitting themselves right now.” one says as he rolls over and falls back to sleep.

In the morning I am curious if our well medicated kids were woken by our Strigiforme visitors.

“Did you guys hear the owls last night?” I ask.

“No, but those monkeys kept me awake.”

I am forced to question what these kids learn in science and geography. At least they knew it wasn’t a cheetah.

At night in the woods everything sounds like a bear approaching. I have an embarrassing tale about a bear attack that turned out to be a mouse eating my snacks. Ironically bears don’t sound like bears. Their fleet of foot, you can barely here them pass. Naughty kids when they see bears are kind of quiet too.

We are sitting, using the suns dying light to write case notes. The kids are over by their shelters preparing for the night they are tired and starting to become loud and inappropriate. None of us really care that much, as there is no one but us for miles. We too have been walking all day and are tired, and our bed rolls are surprisingly comfortable. Because correcting their behavior would require energy we limit our interventions to an occasional redirection when we feel that some arbitrary line has been crossed with their banter.  Though its mainly just to remind the kids we haven’t fallen asleep.

Suddenly all is quiet, there is not a sound coming from the naughties. This is bad. Things are never quite. Someone is getting raped, or we are about to get murdered, or worse. We are alert and outside of our tarp in a flash. We look around, but we can see no one. An eternity passes as we try to understand what’s happening, then we hear the first whistle. Soft at first but then harsh and shrill. Then another, then another. Soon six whistles are sounding the alarm.

We give the kids emergency whistles. They are for blood, bee’s and bears. The whistle are the one thing the kids take seriously.

I see a gray (formerly black) face poke out from under a tarp. It points to the tree line and mouths bear. I spin around and there is a bear. A small one. A few hundred pounds at best. I can’t believe it is so close.

I want a better look.

I grab a camera and start walking towards it. It sees me and takes off running. I decide to follow. I enter into a chase. I hear one of my partners behind me. We are moving quickly through the forests. We run for two or three minutes, the bear always a few hundred feet ahead. “Wait” I hear my buddy and stop. He is short of breath, I too am breathing hard “What do we do if we catch it?” I haven’t thought this far ahead. “Take a photo” I offer. “Great we are going to get mauled for a photo.” He is right we are dumber than the kids. We turn around and start back in the direction of camp. It has started to get dark. In a few minutes of walking we realize we are lost. I forbid him to yell for help. No one can know we have been so stupid. A quarter hour of stumbling around in the increasing darkness we arrive back in camp. Embarrassed at being so amateur we try and avoid the kids.

We crawl back into the tarp. Our colleague is in disbelief. “Man you guys are insane.” He is correct. “That was really cool, I thought we were dead, and you guys chase that thing off.” He has to be kidding “That was brave. Thanks.” He is new, he knows no better. Thank god. The kids come over one by one. We are their hero’s. They too think we chased the bear away. They are keen to help us for the first time all week. They offer to carry some of our weight in the morning. I go to sleep knowing the kids will not try and escape tonight.

Posted: October 10, 2008

The naughties aren’t that smart. Actually I am being kind. There is no way around it most are a thick as pig shit. Some surprise me from time to time but it is rare.
So one day, we are doing our thing and this scraggly ass Coyote walks out in front of us. It’s terrified, two minutes before it was just trying to get through another day, minding its own business, working out where lunch is going to come from and trying not to get picked off by some Hill Billy huntsman, when it is suddenly confronted by a pack of delinquents.
There is a tense standoff. The kids are silent.  I know they are freaking out, they have no idea what to do. The Coyote is also silent; I know he is freaking too. But he has a much better grasp of the situation that the kids, He knows this is bad and is trying to work out what to do.

We are on the verge of freaking out as we have no idea what either party is going to do, and we are worried that a kid is going to try and catch the mutt, but we also think it’s really cool, there a coyote only a few feet away and this never happens.

Finally, a kid speaks “Fuck man, it’s a… it’s a… it’s a fucking Cheetah.”

I shit you not, a Cheetah. Suddenly the dog knows he’s safe. Even he can out smart a pack of delinquents. He leisurely strolls off.

Originally Posted: October 6, 2008

We are in Az and one of the kids (not under my supervision) steels a car and drives off. It is six miles to the nearest town down a completely straight road.. The kid is all of 5 feet tall and can barely see over the steering wheel. His legs are however long enough as he has found the accelerator and has pinned it to the floor. We can see he has his seat belt on, and diligently uses his turn signal on the one corner he must negotiate to leave the camp. I am called over and we get into a car and follow.

Follow not chase.  This is made very clear as we drive out of camp.

Forbidden to get into a high speed chase so we drive after him, at a at a moderate distance and at a none high speed. We are doing 50 and he is pulling away, quickly. We are surprised he can drive a stick so well. Then there is a puff of smoke, a brief pause then the loud bang reaches us. It appears he can’t drive a stick. The engine is dead. He coasts to a stand still. We dive out of the car. He starts to run. I am the only one with cell service so I call the police. They are coming. G my co-worker shows incredible speed for a big guy and catches the kid. He is forced to restrain him.

They are in the middle of the road. This is bad, but the kid had some sort of weapon and it was the only option. I stop traffic to prevent a tragedy. Other staff have finally arrived. A Border Patrol man turns up. “Help him, help him” a staff calls to the Officer. The Border Patrol draws his gun. I see this from a distance. Something is wrong. I Scream over the noise of the slightly hysterical but unhelp female staff to the Patroller. “Help G, help the staff on the ground. Help him with the kid”

The Border Patrol man turns with a look of horror on his face. He puts the gun away, walks over and grabs and cuffs the kid. “Sorry man, he says” he helps G up. “I thought this was some father son domestic.”

G has no idea how close he was to being shot.
Incidentally G is black, I am sure this had nothing to do with the BP willingness to shoot.

Posted: October 5, 2008

Delinquents speak in a special code. The whole purpose of the code is to be as evasive as possible whenever they talk. This is because Naughtisum makes you extremely paranoid; you become convinced that everyone is trying to trick you in to confessing something.  Sometimes this isn’t actually paranoia. Sometimes the code is simply to cover the fact that you don’t know everything. (See John) Other times the code is used to hide an embarrassing truth that you never want your peers to find out. Most often it is to make an excuse for being really lazy.

Take for example asthma. Don’t get me wrong here, some naughties really do have asthma. They live in polluted cities where it is hard to breath. Nearly all of them come from a disadvantaged back grounds that makes medical treatment unaffordable. But we have an incident rate of asthma a thousand times the national average, even for our population. Most destressing is that this health epidemic seems to have evaded detection and diagnosis by the entire medical community.

I first became suspicious when I would supervise the kids playing sports. They would run around playing teams sports for hours. (On a side note we have some truly gifted athletes.) None of them would pause or take a break. Now and then they would stop for a drink, throw their cup in the trash and go back out and play. This could go on for hours.

When the session would come to an end I would ask one of the same kids to take the trash to the dumpster. Suddenly everyone is asthmatic and unable to carry heavy things over a short distance. The bag weighs less than 5 pounds. The dumpster is 40 feet away.

You see Asthma is gangster code for I am really lazy and know my medical rights better that you.

An allergy to bees is another classic example. There are bees near the dumpsters, it the same over the entire country. Claiming a bee allergy reduces the risk of being asked to take the trash out. It all so hides the fact you are scared of bees. By being allergic you will never have to show fear in front of your peers or do hard work. Sadly, for the youth I just wait until it is dark before asking them to take the trash out and then ask the kids I am not carrying and inhaler for. I am waiting for the day someone tells me they have a bear allergy.

Food allergies are a big one. I once had 6 kids on one trip all allergic to vegetables. How can this be? The kids when they arrive are asked if they have allergies or medical conditions. There is no other testing or verification, so the kids list the things they don’t like so they won’t have to eat anything they don’t want to. They are teenagers so they say vegetables. They also tell us they are asthmatic. We are worried about litigation so we diligently write it all down.

So food allergies are gangster code for I was pampered and spoilt at home so I never had to eat anything that I didn’t want to. Now I am in placement I have brought this inflated sense of self-entitlement with me and will only eat what I say I can eat. Or it means I will exert what little power I have, and you will have to follow the rules.  One or other or both, it really depends on the kid.

Posted: October 4, 2008 

We  know very little about the social and sexual lives of ticks. We have no idea what makes them tick.  We don’t know what makes one tick attractive to another tick. They have no bars or online dating to meet each other. They have no eyes, no ears; they seem to rely on smell to find each other. It’s a miracle that they survive to pass on their genes. But 2,6-dichlorophenol, a tick specific sex pheromone, seems to be as effective as alcohol is for humans, at getting ticks to drop their inhibitions, throw caution to the wind and get them to bump uglys.

After they mate the female then climbs high into a tree, bush or shrub and waits. Exposed to the elements she just sits there, hoping that a passing bird will not eat her. Conception has not yet occurred. She holds the sperm cells inside her; they are in long-term storage. She must be patient, extremely patient. She cannot fertilize her eggs until she feeds and it may be months or even years before she next eats. Then the breeze brings her a whiff of Butyric acid, the tick has no idea what that is, she only knows it as C3H7COOH. It a sex attractant given off by mammals. If follows us around like a cheap Cologne. We give it off from our skin, from our naughty bits. It makes us attractive to each other, but it makes female ticks crazy with blood lust. Smelling it the tick throws herself at the area where the smell is strongest. If she is lucky she lands on a passerby. If she is unlucky she must climb up again and wait. Once riding her new host she starts to head towards the skin. Once there she borrows her beak down through the epidermis and starts to drink. She gorges herself in her hosts blood until she can take no more, she then drops off, fertilizes her eggs, which she lays in the soil and dies.
No one has trained her how to do this, her mother died long before she hatched. It is instinct. There is no emotion in it. She is simply drawn by a series of chemicals that awake a dormant evolutionary drive within her. It is not personal, just instinct.
All that being said it felt pretty personal when I found a deer tick on my scrotum on fifth day of the last trip I was on. It didn’t feel very biological. It felt much more like a personal affront. I was not happy.

You could say that it is just an occupational hazard. If you say this you have never had a tick on your nut sack. This is something that someone should never just accept. I have PTSD. I may never recover fully.

I am not sure if it’s because my Gangsters have poor circulation, or if it is because they are truly the ‘Stone cold killas’ they profess to be, but for some reason my Gangsters hands are always cold. I know this because they always have to place them down their pants to keep them warm. Or at least that’s how it appears. For like 3 year olds signaling the need to pee, these guys have constant hand genital contact. It’s like they are engaged in some form of a pocket pool marathon. Except there is no side pocket discretion its full frontal cupping.

Gangsters are also chivalrous – to a degree. In that they like to shake hands a lot. They are always shaking hands. They see someone for the first time in, I don’t know, 13 minutes, and they are shaking hands like they have not seen them in weeks.  Walk past them in a corridor, both to and from the bathroom and they want to shake hands, in both directions.

 No matter what you’re holding or no matter what you are doing they want to shake your hand. Failing to shake a Gangsters hand when it is offered is extremely disrespectful. Only scorned women know more fury than a disrespected gangster.

So I oblige, not from fear, but because wrestling an anger gangster to the ground in order to help modify their behavior is accompanied with a huge amount paper work, it is this paper work burden that makes it so unappealing. I try to avoid doing restraints simply to avoid the paper work. QED shake the gangster’s hands.

The shaking hands is not the problem. My problem is the combination of hand rewarming and hand shaking. You walk past, their hands are in their pants. They take them out and try to shake your hand. Their palms glistening with gangster nut sweat.

So that’s the catch. Disrespect the gangster and deal with the violent outburst and follow up consequence or shake a warm salty palm.

 

 

So the kids use the word John as a noun, not a proper noun, but a regular old naming word. It can be used in almost any context. “Pass me the john” “This John is broken.” “This John is too big” “This is John is really hot.” The word means nothing and they use it because it is 1) cool, 2) their peers do it and whatever their friends do they must also do 3 )they are lazy and stupid and by calling something john, they need never have to go to the trouble of finding out what something is really called. This is more than likely the case. Part of Naughtisum is that you already know everything. Admitting you don’t know everything is admitting that there is a small chance you could be wrong about something. The rules of naughtisum forbid you being wrong about anything. Ever. So…

When we hike all things are Johns. Some John are trees, some Johns are rocks, and some are chipmunks. John is never a guy called John. The only John we have hiked with was universally called White Bread.  This is of course not racist.  Somehow.

Most often the John is the backpack that they carry.

The word John and others like it make my job hard. I really want to help all the little “G’s” in my care but half the time I have no idea what they are saying. If only they would use real words with real meanings.

The kids also use the word Husky. This, like John, is really another meaningless word. Husky however is an adverb and used to modify a noun like john. Husky could mean anything really, but most often used to refer to something large or heavy, steep or difficult. It could also refer to someone’s physique or, though unlikely, someone’s pet.

So for 4 days I had to listen to people refer to their husky john – backpack

Or that Husky John – me, Due to my back pack carrying skills.

Or Husy John – A slightly rotund kid in the group
Or Husky John – a smelly shit that a kid just took.

My job is to try and work out which Husky John they are referring too with our losing my shit.

The best part, the silver lining to all this, is the kids don’t really know what the other kid is talking about either when they refer to a john. Although they pretend too. It results in a lot of pointing and them saying ‘no that John.’ ‘This John?’ ‘No the other John.’ ‘Oh this John?’ “no that John.’ This could go on for minutes until a new real world adverb is used like blue or round, or my name. It would be funny if it wasn’t really fucking irritating

Most confusing I think you will agree. English is so useful and expressive and these kids just fuck it all up.

Well this got me thinking. When we look back at recent history we often think “my god how did we get by without email, or can you remember before we had cell phones!” Was there a time when cavemen sat around and said. “Can you remember when none of us could talk? Man how did we get by.”

Better yet was there a transition time. A time when some cavemen were still holding out and refusing to talk because they thought it was just a fad.

Or was there a time after the invention of fire where older cavemen just didn’t understand and consider this new technological breakthrough too intimidating?. “I still can’t understand fire. The world is changing so fast’

Sadly I still live in that transition. Like the people that are frustrated that their friends don’t have cell phones or that their folks can’t use their computer. I live in a time where some people still can’t fucking talk properly and it drives me nuts.

First posted: September 30, 2008

The Photo is of a Husky. Cute I think you will agree. It is a baby husky so could be referred to as a husky young bull John. A story for another time i feel.

Originally posted: October 2, 2008

So it safe to say that my kids have a pretty fucked up word view. The very fact that they are in placement strongly suggests that they struggle when it comes to making ethical decisions.

These kids would sell their mothers, or force their sisters into prostitution for pocket change. Yet talk shit on their “hood” and they will kill you. It is so strange; kids that have no apparent loyalty to anyone or anything revere the small area in which they live. It is their Mecca, their holiest of holy. Frequently we break up fights and restrain kids because someone disrespected their block. It is totally insane.

I have nothing funny to say about the situation. I am just deeply saddened and troubled by it. These kids will literally kill each other over a few city blocks places where most people are scared to go.  A place where most of the people who live do nothing but dream about being able to move away to somewhere better.

So we take these kids into the Forrest to show them something different. To open their eyes to another world. They don’t care; at night when we are in camp they sit around chatting, nostalgic about “the Bricks” and “the outs”.  AKA home. They hate the woods. They tell us its “corny” and that we should leave and go home. We ask what they would be doing if they were back at home right now.

“Nothing” they reply “just sitting around, like this shooting the shit.” We all question why the fuck were doing what we do this for living. “But least we don’t have to worry about a drive by here” one adds. Then we realize why we do.

Originally posted September 29 2008

 

So I am hiking with my kids through the wilds of PA. The kids, who are naughty, are struggling. They are ill prepared for exertion. Placement is a world where sitting on your ass and doing nothing is the norm.

That’s a lie.  Placement is a place where sitting on your ass and doing nothing while bitching about having nothing to do is the norm.

They bitch loudest when an alternative to nothing is offered, which they promptly refuse.  because it is boring.  So when not in school they pretty much do nothing. Except bitch.  Did I mention that?  They always bitch.
This always pisses me off as part of my job was to offer weekend activities for the kids. They would never take part. I would offer to take the kids up to the gym to play basketball, they would think about it and then they would refuse to go, why because its more fun sitting playing basketball on an Xbox, while bitching about having nothing to do.  Bitching about having nothing to do except play basketball on a play station is much better than running up and down getting sweaty.
Placement is all about bitching. You bitch until you get what you want. What do they want? They want the right to bitch about anything they want. They will bitch all day just as long as they don’t actually have to do anything for themselves to make change happen.

So we are marching through the Forrest and the kids are complaining that they are going to die. I assure them that no one is going to die. No one has ever died doing what we do. But they are pretty sure death is but a heartbeat away. Granted some of the hills are steep, but my pack is heavier and I seem to be doing fine.
We toddle on.
“Yo! How do you do this shit?” Naughty kid asks. “this shit is tripping”  (this has nothing to do with stumbling)
Very patiently I tell him how I do it. I explain what you need to do to make the pack feel lighter. I explain that pulling your pants over your ass makes it easier to walk. I explain wearing a beanie in the middle of summer, though cool looking, makes it really fucking hot. I explain about tightening the waist belt to ease the load on your shoulders, I tell them that wearing a 40 pound pack like a school bag (on one shoulder) is dumb and counter productive.
I know all these thing work because I do them. I do them every fucking day we hike. They watch me do them, there is no secret. I model the behaviors these kids need to adopt. That is my job – to educate these kids about the way of the forest.  (that’s not really my job, but that’s what I tell my friends, who don’t get what I do and only ask to be polite. They are happy with their ignorance as the terror of what I really do would make them uncomfortable)
The kid listens to what I have to say, he mulls over my advice, and then does nothing. He walks away and bitches like before.

 

Do not ask for my advice and then ignore it and keep on bitching. If you ask for advice and then refuse to listen this negates your right to bitch. At least try what the experts tell you. If you try it and it fails then bitch all you want. But until then shut the fuck up.
I am worried that this is not just at trait of naughty kids but fast becoming the America way. I saw this all the time when I worked as a personal trainer,  I saw it when I was confronted with a killer snake in Australia, but they are tales for another day.