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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
For two years, I led wilderness trips for teenagers who had been begged, bribed, tricked and sometimes physically dragged from their beds to get to us. And, yes, I can still sleep at night.
Aug 30, 2000 | "How the hell do you sleep at night, knowing what you did to kids?"
Twitch was a 16-year-old reporter at Pacific News Service. He had come to us through juvenile hall. He'd lived on the streets, kicked drugs at a younger age than I'd ever done any and had the face and attitude of an arrogant 22-year-old. We were taking a cigarette break outside, and he had asked me what I'd done before coming to PNS. When I told him that I used to work for a therapeutic wilderness program, he froze for a second. "Wait, so this was one of those lockdown camps?"
"Yes," I said, preparing to launch into my Heartwarming Story of How Lost Souls Find Themselves in the Desert.
But I didn't have time. His eyes widened, his face broke open and for a second looked young and scared and hurt, and then it slammed shut. He asked me his question, threw down his cigarette and walked away.
It was a year before he could speak to me without glaring, and two before he would tell me why: When he was 13, he'd been escorted -- kidnapped, he'd say -- to a therapeutic boarding school similar in many ways to the program I used to work for. The school had since been closed down and he was suing for abuse.
So how do I sleep at night?
For two years, during all seasons, I led wilderness trips for teenagers who didn't want to be there, who had been begged, cajoled, bribed, tricked and sometimes physically dragged from their beds before getting dropped in our laps. Once they arrived, their clothes were taken and their piercings pulled, and their Walkmen, cigarettes and makeup were put into storage. Then they were dumped into the custody of two assholes who showed them how to roll up tarp and webbing and a sleeping bag into a pack, marched them into camp and told them that from now on they'd need to inform one of us every time they wanted to go to the bathroom.
As one of the assholes in question, I offered very few answers, even fewer expressions of sympathy, and had little information to provide them about why they were there or what they could expect. We would tell them that they'd discover for themselves what they needed here, and that our job was to teach them the skills they needed to survive and to keep themselves safe.
It was usually at least a week before any of them would stop thinking of me as "that bitch."
Their parents would spend the three weeks of the program planning for their kids' future with the help of an educational consultant. These consultants, often of dubious credentials, would help the parents decide what to do with their out-of-control, drug-using, sleeping-around, disrespectful, underachieving, overmedicated, underappreciated, blue-haired, multipierced, ADHD, ADD, OCD, dyslexic and usually damned unhappy kids.
In the end, the kids were often sent off to yet another kind of institution, generally referred to as "emotional growth schools." These schools often charged upward of $60,000 a year and promised all the happy endings we promised, except more of them and for longer.
And the same umbrella company that owned us also owned these schools.
Sometimes I felt as if I was only there to smooth the kids over, prep them and fatten them up for their next step. We may have been in the business of miracles, but business is still business. And healthy, balanced kids? That was our product.
But I didn't deal with parents or schools or experts or the people above the people above me. I was just out there with the kids and the canyons and the campfires. The miracles.
Like Karen.
