Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Russians Have come

I've written before about my camp directing days and working with the Soviet Jews who had recently arrived. I mentioned Ruslan who threw a rock through the temple window.  and Alex who stole the keys from the piano during a recital. But the all time godfather of the boisterous Russian kids was Gregory.

I first met Gregory on my first day as a counselor; a very green counselor who had never worked with kids. We were thrown into the deep end and not given a lot of instruction what to do with the kids. I'm one of those people who come off as very competent and self sufficient and I guess I have some strong leadership qualities so despitet my lack of experience I was given a group the assistant director jokingly called the dirty dozen.  I barely knew where to pick up the milk crate for lunch let alone how to deal with 12 boisterous kids, half of whom didn't speak English. I was supposed to have a Russian speaking co-counselor but somethign happened to his funding and he never showed up on the first day of camp.

The first day of camp is always a confusing blur of misplaced kids, crying parents and short tempers. My very first activity was swimming which meant taking this group of kids I didn't know into the changing room. Almost as soon as we got into the locker room this terrified looking kid named Dmitry started crying. I tried asking him what was wrong but he just kept screaming the word "polotense" over and over. This was long before the internet so I had no way of figuring out what he meant. 

Finally, this large, muscular kid, turned to me and in a thick russian accent said "He cries because he has no towel." I asked him his name and he said Gregory. I asked him tell Dmitry that it was okay and I would get him a towel. He said something in Russian and instead of Dmitry calming down he started to scream louder. By this point another one of the Russian speaking counselors had come in and gave Gregory a stern look. Gregory started laughing hysterically. He said something to Dmitry and he calmed down instantly.

 The counselor said to me exasperatedly "Gregory has quite an odd sense of humor. I asked what he had said and the counselor said "Ehhm. he told Dmitry that you were very mad at him for not having a towel and you were going to spank him." Gregory was on the floor laughing hysterically. 

(To be continued)

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