"Beneath"

When I was a teenager, I got a job as a lifeguard at a summer camp. When the counselors learned I liked art, my duties got expanded to teaching crafts to the "slow" kids. I guess it's all how you look at things, but I didn't think the kids were all that slow, but that was before half the kids were diagnosed with ADHD and given Ritalin. Maybe they weren't the best at school, but part of the problem was they really didn't like sitting still very long. They'd slap their projects together quickly, then look for trouble until I thought about the salamanders. After all, we were doing crafts at a picnic table in the woods.

I showed them how to look beneath rocks and rotten logs and sort through the leaves to find the squiggly little things, and taught them to hold the salamanders gently because they have delicate skin. The kids happily looked for bugs and grubs to feed them while the kids who liked doing crafts finished their projects. My class became their favorite, and the counselors ended up giving them to me through most of the summer. They were sweethearts.

There was more to the job because we were also trying to get "retarded" adults out of an institution and into group homes by teaching them basic skills. I was to teach them water safety. That's a story in itself because they really didn't get the concept. Also, about half of them weighed about half a ton each, and if they decided to walk on the bottom of the pool in the deep end, I was the one who had to get them out. But even with the scares they gave me, the adults were sweethearts too. I racked up a lot of love that summer!

The picture is wax pencil on coquille board. And yes, I know the terms I used aren't PC any more. I wrote this in context of the times and say "developmentally delayed" now.