so some of y'all thought i fell in love with a student. or wanted to. or dreamt of such matters. because of the way you read my framing of some words that i entered into the public record. ha! silly folkies. (feel free to listen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zp3LPRzuXo - and at any point throughout. i deemed a soundtrack for this writing oh so very needed)
we'll get to the story of M and i. first - thanks to a couple former summit achievement (SA) staff for some direct communication after i was fired. those conversation directly led to this soon-to-be lengthy writing. b love and steel - i have big love for the both of you. next - lemme explain a few matters that are obvious to people in the scene, but not very obvious to people outside of the insulated SA scene:
1 - in the role of "guide" at SA, whether guiding in the wilderness or in the post-wilderness program, the simplest way to describe the job we do is we're life coaches. 24/7 we are together, aiding and talking. and talking some more. and doing whatever needs doing, within reason. for 8 days we are with these youths, then we have 6 consecutive days with no work at all. saying we work for 8 days in a row may be controversial, considering the way guides are paid, but any job where there are 7 complete days of work combined with another day that often begins around 6 AM, and does not end until 2 PM at a minimum, is a complete day. this final working day, filled with meeting after meeting involving both guide shifts, is compensated as 1/4 of a day.
2 - nicknames are given out and taken on quite regularly at summit. over the last few months alone, numerous names were fitted to different guides: many mom's (guys and gals alike were mom), at least 1 dad, aunt, and uncle. there were "the sweets," sauce, and spice. spice was bequeathed upon me by a lad/group of lads. not a girl. despite the vivid imaginings of my fanciful friends, it was as close to 100% non-sexual as any nickname i've ever known. i'm sure there were many more nicknames given out to many others. some publicly stated, some probably not.
3 - i probably came off as ubber-creepy to some folks when talking about "earning" a hug. welcome to the world of SA, with an official no touch policy (ntp), and official reasons to break such a policy. and unofficial use of touch regularly. not to mention the silly reasoning's for having and implementing the policy in the first place, all the energy that goes into doing so. and the pavlovian response lessons we are teaching our clients through the months and months they might stay at out behavioral modification program - touch is bad. touch is wrong. touch and you will be punished. touch is rarely okay, and only when an authority figure says so. yeah, there's a lot there, and we'll revisit that topic.
the short story that was the story surrounding my firing begged for more. not a book. maybe a longer short story, maybe a novella. the more i think about this situation and related matters, the longer and longer i envision this story being. if for no other reason, i must write this story to free up the space in my mind it's occupying, enabling me to recommence my book. this story may take awhile to get to blog worthiness. perhaps this will be a serial, involving as many blogged additions as are necessary to close out this life chapter that involves you, in some way.
i may be the main character in my version of this story, but that doesn't mean you, the interactive reader, perhaps friend or acquaintance or family member, are not involved. we're in this together. so let's delve in, where rumor has it, there may be a lot of hurt that i am directly responsible for causing. so, let's feel some hurt together - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clq01TXQR0s - johnny cash style, more appropriate for me than NIN, since M did refer to me as, "old, rusty, and wise" in her goodbye letter.
Let's Achieve...Something
late december 2007. i do a phone interview with SA's departed superhero, chris hayward. i ask him what kind of measures SA uses to gauge success over the long term with the population they serve. industry wide, there's really no good answer to this question except the honest one - we don't have anything that measures the real gains our students make. i didn't get that answer, but after my references checked out, i got the job. probably in part because i asked questions like that.
for the 1st half year, i'm primarily working with the post-wilderness team. then i switch to the wilderness. it doesn't take long for me to make my imprint here. an imprint that is still felt, quite literally. at that time, the guides abided by ntp also, amongst themselves, probably for varying reasons. funk that. the first time and the last time i was asked which of the 5 senses i'd miss the most if it went bye bye, my answer was consistent - touch. side note - anson was the last person to ask me that question, in what may have been my last cage time, just prior to leaving for 6 months of near isolation from humans in new mexico.
there'd be long ones. strong ones. and i dare say people fed off those hugs. cause, again, hugs are great. A team, B team, C team - all the SA wilderness teams, became huggers. when not working, but still living amongst the guides in the staff house - fuggedaboutit - hugs galore. have arms, will hug. have no arms, i'll hug you more. when i returned to SA in late '10, i was pleased to see and hear that guide hugs were still part of check-in's, seemingly on every team, on both guide shifts.
so, after a year away from SA, i'm back. i was on a wilderness team on my first shift. we had 3 woods and mountain filled days of hiking and relationship formation, and 3 nights of happy nighttime guide hugging. day 4, on the hike out to our van, i did a nice leave-no-trace deed. i found a bottle of liquor just before the hiking was completed, poured out the liquid, and walked on with the bottle in hand. when 5 minutes later i found myself walking up to the team posing for a picture, in stride i joined, jokerish smile on my face, bottle in hand. a quick witted student response later, and uncle rich was born, with an unspoken "crazy" understood to come before uncle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD-SMLTfuVw maybe the kids were onto something - after all, just prior to coming back to SA, i worked throughout california with a prostitute. and SA was very aware of this. well, uncle's, crazy or not, can say what they think, and this uncle did just that.
i formed a few decent relationships with boys on that team. same for the boys and girl i'd work with on the post-wilderness team. a few students sought me out to make sure i participated in their goodbye circles - a literal circle of people that were involved directly in the students time in the program; sometimes family members are involved in this circle, which almost always takes place on the day the student leaves the program. during follow-up phone calls, a couple students made sure to inform their therapists to say hello to this guy, uncle rich. i'm a softy, so i'd feel warm and fuzzy when i received those messages. occasionally, a student will write the program, and again, they'd make sure to say hello to me. these messages were the real affirmation that i was succeeding at what i understood our main job component to be - building relationships.
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