Why do you do what you do?

Hopefully you have a story.  In the past few months I’ve had conversations with people about work and I’ve found that a lot of people can’t tell me why they do what they do.  There has to be a reason.  At least tell me that it’s easy work for a decent wage.  I’d respect that more than the lazy I don’t really know answer.

Why do I do what I do?  I’m the program director for a youth-serving non-profit in Tempe, Arizona.  We run really affordable character enhancing programs for kids, and offer a safe, fun and positive place for kids to be during non-school hours.

And here’s why I do it:

When I left my third grade classroom on June 15, 1990 at Salk Elementary School there was no way for my 9-year-old brain to predict or imagine that one of my classmates, Autumn Wallace, was about to be brutally and senselessly murdered.

As usual, Autumn parted ways with us at Chanticleer Road.  Joshua, Jennifer and I walked north on Gilbert Street toward our apartment complex; Autumn walked east toward her empty home.  An hour or two later Maria del Rosio Alfaro knocked on Autumn’s door.  Rosie was a family friend, so Autumn let her in.

Rosie stabbed Autumn 57 times and stole $300 worth of property from the house.  Autumn’s mom Linda found Autumn dead hours after that.

Statistically speaking, there is a really large window in our society that needs to be shut.  Between the hours of 3pm and 6pm more children and teens are the victims of violent crimes than any other times.  Additionally, this same window is when children and teens find the most trouble and are the perpetrators in crimes.

Without a It’s-A-Wonderful-Life-like moment, it’s kind of impossible to figure out if the work that I have done has actually saved anyone from a fate like Autumn Wallace’s, or if we’ve inspired any children to break a cycle of crime or violence.  (Even though I still would love to run down the street yelling “Hello, Bedford Falls! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, Emporium! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan! Hey! Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter!”)

But I’ve got my reason.  It’s a reason that gets me out of bed every morning.  It’s a reason that makes Mondays easier to handle.  And it’s an answer for the question Why do you do what you do? So tell me…why do you do what you do?

Okay.  I’ve worked around children for some time now and I’ve gotten pretty good at holding in the “fucks” and “shits” that every adult has bubble up their throat from time-to-time.

I get hit on the head with a basketball and want to yell “Who the fuck threw that?”  but instead I’ve learned that to keep my job I must say, “Who the heck threw that?”

So yesterday I was playing a large game of NAME THAT TUNE with about 150 kids in the gym (the Sedona Club was in town and visiting our Club).  The game consists of different musical challenges and trivia questions.  Things like “who sings this song” or “finish these lyrics.”  It was fun.

I was super-prepared for the game.  I even had notes with a script. 

I should have known it was a bad idea to deviate from my notes.  I had four kids standing in front of the group and my notes said, “It’s now time for a dance-off.”  And I was going to play the song You’re A Jerk by the New Boyz.  And the kids would have to do the jerk.  The best dancer would earn points for his or her team.

Easy.  Not even an idiot could fuck this up.

So I was feeling good and decided to improvise.  I was straight freesytling.  And I said on a microphone in front of a gymnasium full of kids, “All right, now it’s time for a jerk off.”

A jerk off.

The second the words left my mouth I realized my mistake.  The adult staff in the room were laughing to the point of tears.  One staff fell to the floor in laughter.  I got red in the face.

A jerk off.  Seriously, Mike?

This post is kind of a hodgepodge of topics that I’m throwing together.

Firstly, I want to say that Summer Camp is almost over.  If your’e counting, I’ve got two days left.  That means in two days I will have a bit more free time, and I won’t be at work from sun rise to sunset.  I really couldn’t be more happy about this.  Whenever our After School Program is ending and we’re gearing up for summer, I find myself thinking, “I’m so ready to be done with the After School Program.  Thank god summer is starting.”  And now that summer is winding down, I’m thinking the opposite.

Secondly I’m taking a group of teenagers to California’s Six Flags amusement park tonight.  We’re leaving around midnight and returning at 6 a.m. on Friday.  I’m quite certain I’ll be bored, so follow me on Twitter to converse with me on the trip.

I also finished two books in the past week (give or take).  The 33rd book I read this year was Lux The Poet by Martin Millar.  In ten words: Incredibly jarbled and choppy but it is a decent story.  The 34th book I read in 2010 was Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel.  I picked up the book because I heard Kunkel on a radio interview or podcast (I don’t remember where) and came across his new relase at the library.  In ten words: Convoluted and not worth the time it took to read.

For those of you that still read this blog, thanks.  I’ll be giving it more attention in the near future.

I’ve worked around children in some capacity for the past eleven years, and I’ve heard plenty of strong opinions about kids and social media.  The general consensus is that websites like Myspace and Facebook are a sexual predator’s playground and children have nothing to gain from such virtual cesspools.  From my experience, however, the benefits of socializing on the Interweb by young people are so many that it’s hurtful for us to continue making it difficult for youth to socialize on the net.

Let’s simplify this for a second: teens – who have traditionally been difficult to motivate to read or write – are spending their free time reading and writing.  Teens – who aren’t widely known for using their analytical skills or for socializing outside of their comfort zones – are using their analytical skills to diversify their circle of friends.  What’s wrong with any of that?

Don’t get me wrong.  I know that there are creeps trolling the web trying to talk to your children.  In fact, if you search the Internet long enough you’ll be able to find some antiquated article from a paper like the Tallahassee Times about some teen that made a bad choice to meet some pervert at a Waffle House on a Friday night.  I get that.  I know they are out there.  But I also know that if you send your pre-teen out to the mall on a Friday night there are equally pervy guys out there and that threat is just as real.  And don’t you remember the wave of stories in the late 80s where men were driving up to groups of unsuspecting young women and exposing themselves?

If I were a parent (and every day that I look at my little-bitty bank account, I’m glad that I’m not), I would avoid completely banning social networking.  I’d tell my children about the perverts that are out at the mall, on the internet, and maybe even working at the local grocery story…but I wouldn’t try to scare them into thinking every person at the mall, on the interent, or working at the grocery story was a child-molesting scumbag.  I would warn my kids about over-sharing personal information to any stranger (on the internet or otherwise)…but I would still encourage them to blog, update status messages, and share their feelings to their social networks online.

So I guess my overall point is this: the ban-all-things-cool-about-the-internet-because-we-are-afraid-of-scary-internet-monsters approach won’t work.  Kids are smart, and when mom, dad or the school principal start telling cautionary tales about Internet witches that want to kidnap children and cook them in a children-shaped oven, they tune you out and miss the real message: don’t assume that everyone is good.  End of story.

When you work for ten plus hours with the same group of 100 kids, you start to create different ways to entertain yourself.

One of my primary sources of daily entertainment includes getting kids to sing for me.  I do this two ways.  The first is a tit-for-tat sort of thing.  I say “do you want to do activity X?  Then someone in here needs to sing me a song that I like or tell me a joke that makes me literally laugh out loud (LLOL).”  Kids get up and I audition their talents.  It’s funny because the kids have started to figure out that I really like songs from commercials, and they’ve been testing out any commercial song they can think of.  Right now just about every kid in the Club sings “London Gold…it’s the best” subconsciously.  That stupid jingle is stuck in EVERYONE’s head.
I’ve also been teaching kids songs that they’d probably normally never know…like Manic Monday by the Bangles.  I just randomly yell “It’s just another Manic Monday” and the kids respond with the Woo-woo-woo part.  Here’s an audio sample of our greatness:

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Crap, it’s going to be a long summer.

Today a nine-year-old introduced me to his five-year-old sister like this:

“She’s only five. She’s kind of weak, and a little dumb, but I like her.”

The first day of Summer Day Camp is done…only 47 more to go. But who is counting?

In the Teen Center at work yesterday a group of boys were sitting around watching the Suns VS Lakers game and as teenage boys tend to do, they started talking trash on one another.  After a few warnings about their shitty language, they finally started censoring the cuss words.  Here is one exchange that took place between Oscar and Luis:

Oscar: “My dog just had another set of puppies.”
Luis: “Your dog had puppies like three months ago.”
Oscar: “I know…she has a lot of puppies.”
Luis: “That’s because your dog is a…” he paused to think about the word he was going to use.  “That’s because your dog is a H-O-R.”

I work with kids.  I think you know that.  In fact, with a few exceptions, most of my jobs have been working around children.
It’s one of those things that has just happened and isn’t on purpose.  And as a result of being around children all day every day, I have found that I sometimes think like them or are sometimes more interested in what they have to say than the adults around me.  It’s totally fucked up and a shrink could probably unravel this a lot better than I’d ever be willing to let it get unraveled, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that I was in Target the other day and I heard one eight-year-old yell to his eight-year-old friend “I love this movie…have you seen it?”

And anyone who knows me knows that I have trouble staying out of conversations regardless of if I was invited or not.

So when I heard the kid say that he liked a movie, I turned my head to see what movie it was…totally expecting to see them gawking over Iron Man or Avatar or something that kids are into.  But instead, the eight-year-old was pointing to this movie:

I’m serious.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.  WTF?

Really, kid?  You liked the movie set during World War II…about the non-Jewish boy who finds friendship with the Jewish boy (in the “striped pajamas”) on the other side of the fence?  What about it stimulated your little boy brain?

Bless his heart.

There are two six-year olds at work that are glued to one another like Batman and Robin, but they don’t get along and are always fighting…so I guess Ike and Tina is a more accurate comparison.

They are always fighting about stupid things.  “Mike, Jay said that he would walk with me and then he started running.”  Or “Mike, I was playing basketball with Ian and he stole the ball.”

I’ve tried the, “just don’t play with one another” approach.  I’ve tried giving each of them really important tasks that would separate them…but just like Ike and Tina, as soon as my advice is dispensed and my back is turned, they run back to one another’s arms.  Back together, pissing one another off and tattling on one another.

Here’s one I got recently:

“Mike,” Jay ran up to me panting.  “I was standing by Ian and he called me the ‘A’ word.”

Ian is running toward us and denying whatever Jay had told me – even though he wasn’t close enough to hear exactly what Jay said.

“Ian, did you call Jay the ‘A’ word?” I asked.

“No!” Ian said.  “I didn’t say he was an asshole, I said he was being an ass.”

Ugh.

A seven year old at work was explaining to us why he didn’t get his math homework completed the night before.

“I couldn’t go into my mom’s room to get my backpack because she was in there all night with a guy.  She was working.”

The world’s oldest profession?