#oida

during the summer between my junior and senior year of my bacherlor's, when my days in eagleland were drawing to a close, I, the gallant and noble roland sachermorte von wien, took a job at a six-week long federally funded college preparatory summer camp for disadvantaged high schoolers, (hosted in a community college in my hometown, a large-enough city in an appalachian state) for which I was to be paid a couple thousand dollars, a price for which it soon became clear that I was not only selling my labor, but my sanity and my already-tenuous will to live. some people hear "college preparatory camp, federally funded, disadvantaged youth" and, not knowing the full story about camps, high schoolers, or the united states government assume that it must have been a more or less classy affair.

[pause for effect]

this camp was a shitshow.

to begin with, there were three of us for a camp of approximately sixty of these little bastards, all of which were between the ages of 13-17 and seemed to hate me just for existing, which is unsurprising in hindsight, as I've never been particularly popular among large groups of kids that age. this was largely because of the rules the three of us were forced to enforce, such as taking their phones for all but an hour or so a day. that whole taking phones business lasted exactly a day and a half until the kids literally organized a sit-in and refused to go to class until my boss came down and told them they'd be allowed to keep them. which, good on them, but I did get yelled at for literally an hour over it.

that was another thing. they were working us from seven in the morning until midnight, at which point a night monitor would supposedly take over. that is of course until she quit a week in and then one of us had to rotate, meaning we didn't really get any sleep. I really don't blame her but I resent her to this very day and you would too, so shut up.

so these kids didn't want to be there and hated our guts, for understandable reasons because we were forced to be a bunch of goosesteppers less the hammer come down on us and all three of us be corralled in a room and literally yelled at with raised voice and flying spittle by our boss, the owner, and possibly also the receptionist for sixty minutes at a minimum. I wasn't the most pleasant to be around either because I was operating on maybe four hours of sleep a night, being berated at the drop of a hat for things that were outside my control, and undergoing sensory overload from the constant screaming and shouting from the kids.

so this is a very long introduction to basically say that things were already bad enough, I was reduced to a shambling, zombielike state, and my main priorities were to avoid being yelled at, to prevent the kids from subtracting from the population, and preventing the kids from adding to the population, in that order.

herein lies my folly. since the kids were occupied with classes all morning and assorted silly bullshit in the afternoon, I honestly thought they would be too tired to think much about point number three. chalk it up to my card-carrying status on multiple spectrums but I earnestly didn't even think of it. I was a corpse. I thought they would be as well

[here you cast a long-suffering look at the audience, waiting for them to gain, one by one, horrified or amused looks as they realize exactly the kind of story they're about to hear]

so color me surprised when one evening in the very first week when I'd already resigned myself to my lowly fate of starving, being subjected to geneva convention-violating levels of sleep deprivation, and being yelled at all the time, I was approached one of the math teachers who was nice enough to do some evening tutoring

ms. a, let's call her, was a terribly nice woman who was in her first year with the camp and honestly did not know what she was walking into (and would quit about halfway through citing "family matters", leaving one of us to struggle through teaching math as well). she approached me with the sort of deeply concerned face that one has upon witnessing the smoking wreckage of what was almost certainly a fatal car accident. the kind where you hope the driver was miraculously spared, but you know in your heart that the poor bastard had a snowball's chance, and you're already late to work so it's not as if you can stop and investigate.

I gazed upon her and a deep sigh left my body. I already knew it would be bad.

ms. a tells me that one of the students, a 15 year girl terminally allergic to minding her own business, had approached her with the cheshire-esque grin typical of teenagers when they're about to get somebody else in Big Trouble.

"ms. a," she began, "them girls have got boys up in the room. y'all had better stop them before mmhmm."

friends. romans. countrymen. there was choreography. a hand gesture accompanied mmhmm, which ms. a was kind enough to mimic for me

[here the storyteller makes a circle with the fingers of their non-dominant hand and then inserts the index finger of the dominant hand into this circle repeatedly until the point is made. aggressive eye contact with the listener or listeners should be made for maximum effect]

spake roland, "you've got to be fucking kidding me."

I called my boss. he didn't answer. I called the owner. she didn't answer. it was clear that this was all landing on my head. a pleading look in ms. a's direction only got me a woeful shake of the head in return. okay. it was go time.

my coworkers were extremely reluctant to get involved until I brought up the fact that if anybody were conceived on our watch, we wouldn't just be yelled at for at least an hour. we would probably also be fired, and what's more, as our boss kept threatening, not be paid. which would have meant that all our misery up until that point would have been for naught.

so I took point and we became the sex police. and we conducted a raid.

we literally got in formation and marched down the hall. me at the front, and my two coworkers behind each shoulder. like darth vader being flanked by stormtroopers, if darth vader were a pudgy cripple in a thrifted pair of penny loafers and a corduroy suit jacket.

we get to the door of the room. I knock on the door. bang. bang. bang.

[here the storyteller raps on the table slowly yet firmly]

there's rustling behind the door. whispering. shuffling. I hear someone hiss "hide!"

I knock again. bang. bang. bang.

finally the door opens, only barely, and one of the two girls in the room wedges herself into the opening. she crosses her arms. she throws one hip out to one side. she looks me up and down. and she goes, with full disdain, "WHAT."

I remind myself that kentucky is a death penalty state and force a smile. "we need to search your room," I say through tooth and bile

she literally arches backward with the force of her eyeroll, shoves the door all the way open, and lets us in.

so I have to explain first that the way these dorm rooms were set up is that there was a kitchenette area with a sink and a table that connected two bedrooms and a bathroom. they were nice-ass dorms. which was hard to remember when there were piles of candy wrappers, ugly clothes from forever 21, and bottles victoria's secret body sprays strewn everywhere. the kitchenette had no hiding places and there was nobody in the bathroom which left the rooms.

so now the hunt begins. I go into room number one. the closet door is closed. suspicious.

I FLING open the door.

and BAM. [you may bang your hand on the table here for dramatic effect] there's dude number one, pressed up against the side wall as if the door frame will hide him. he doesn't even look at me. he keeps flicking his eyes to the side, wide-eyed, and then staring straight ahead.

it's now that I make the observation that this dude ISN'T EVEN PART OF THE CAMP. he's just some RANDOM DUDE.

in a panic now, I direct one of my officers to look under the bed, and then go into room number two. closet door is open. also suspicious.

I get down on my HANDS and KNEES to look under the bed.

I claw for my phone and turn on the flashlight.

and there's a PAIR of AIR JORDANS

IN

MY

FACE

[here wave hand in front of face]

BAM [bang!] there's dude number two. also not from the camp. literally hiding under the bed.

I look at him.

he looks at me.

and in my rush of adrenaline all I can say to him is

"bruh."

[pause here to either take a sip of your alcoholic beverage or a long drag of your cigarette (one or both is necessary to tell this story) to allow time for the uproar that will no doubt follow. it usually takes a minimum of 30 seconds to be able to continue on]

so we've found tweedle dee and tweedle dum now and I'm trying to figure out what the fuck I should be doing when they share a glance and BOLT down the hallway and out the emergency exit, setting off the alarm. so now the fire department is en route.

great!

I get to the door just in time to watch them speed across a field, VAULT over a park bench, dart across the basketball court, and disappear into the treeline.

jump cut to thirty minutes later. my boss is there, as are all the kids wondering what the fuck is going on, a couple of very amused firemen, and a police officer who tells my boss that he's not going to chase after two random teenagers who were probably just visiting their girlfriends. the two girls get flung out of camp, and I spend the rest of the night with the same vigilant high of a drug dog who just made the biggest bust of its life.

we get pulled out of the classes we're supposed to be assisting with the next morning and yelled at for not one hour, not two hours, but two hours and fifty-three minutes. I timed it.

at one point my boss turns to me and yells "ROLAND WHY DID YOU NOT RUN AFTER THEM?" and I just held up my crutch and stared at him until he felt awkward enough to move on

the rest of the camp proceeded in a similar fashion and to this day I remain a dedicated officer of the sex police.