3-24-08

The Power of Hate

Face to face with a kid I had known for less then 72 hours and already we despised each other to the point of fighting. What did I do to him? I took his swing, for Pete’s sake, a swing! A small argument followed and then three attempts to kick me while I was swinging by. This one incident turned the campers against each other.
I was in a sweat, I was scared, a few hundred miles from home. I was in a camp near the town called Granby, Colorado. As my family and I drove into the camp I began to panic, away from my family for a week! I singed in, got our bags from the van and walked to the cabin. It was a long walk, in the end it took about thirty minutes. I entered the cabin with two other friends from Park City and all doubt of having a good time was wiped clean. There in a chair was my counselor with a guitar in hand.
His name was Paul. A kick back, shoes off, listen to music kind of guy. This is the counselor you would want to have if you are at camp, a few hundred miles from home. In three of the beds were kids, veterans of camps, or they just looked very at home. Later as I learned Gus was in his 2nd week of camp in a row, and he was the only camp veteran. Other campers, whose names I don’t recall, consisted of a dark, tall nerd and two small kids from Denver. A few other faces and names I have forgotten.
The speeches before meals would not be one of the things that I will forget or miss. “I am glad that you have chosen CCO(Camp Chief Ouray) for you camp this summer, I will be going over some basic guild lines ……….” For two long hours, when the long speeches were given, the kids scarfed down their dinner like you and I would never believe.
The next two days were a blur. Archery, team building, knot tying, arts and crafts, rifle shooting, and hiking kept us all busy. The camp was divided into tribes. The cabin of Ute was the cabin of winners.
Before lunch on Wednesday, my friends waited and watched for a swing to open, a kid jump. We saw the open swing and I took action. I dashed to the swing and sat. There was a problem, the kid, Robert, was mad. His face turned to a million emotions at once “Why did you take my swing!?”
“You got off” I replied as smooth as possible.
“GET OFF MY SWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
This went on for a long time. At dinner we glanced at each other and we both knew it was much more then the swing now. Stupid Blackfoot. As a Ute, my cabin members took my side and vice versa for him.
There was one way to settle this, ‘dodge ball’. Both tribes were itching to get at each other’s throat. With the news of a conflict, Blackfoot made allies with another tribe. We, the Utes did the same thing. We ended up with three tribes, they had four.
This whole thing over a swing!
We won. We didn’t just win, WE CRUSHED THEM!!! The point of this is not “Victory” but hate. Hate is what I had for Robert. That turned tribe on tribe. Friendship between other tribes caused us to gain power. The actions I took led to people to go fight each other. I know I’m a kid and so were they, but the same thing could happen on a much larger scale. Isn’t this what caused WW1?
I returned to CCO the next year, I found both counselors were gone. Maybe it was wrong to hate, but I still look at the whole experience as a great time. It was, at least for me!