In life, it is very easy to find yourself falling off track. Times like this are when reality checks are most needed. In this article, I’ll be telling the story of how a 7-year-old boy with autism gave me a sense of perspective that I carry to this very day.
It’s the summer of 2013, right before my junior year of high school. I realized that my resume was seriously lacking as I started to look into colleges more seriously. At the time, I was made aware that a camp I had once volunteered for in the past was opening a new branch for children with special needs. At first I was hesitant, as most 16 year olds would be, at the thought of waking up at 6:00 a.m every day for a month of my summer to work with disabled kids. Eventually, my mother convinced me it would do me good. The camp, which was run by the YMCA, was called Camp Boomerang. The goal of the camp was to pair a volunteer counselor with a child for the course of a month, so that each camper had a sense of familiarity. So along comes the first day of camp, and the conditions couldn’t be worse: thunderstorm, rain, and humidity.
I woke up at 6:00 sharp on that dreary Monday morning with a colossal headache and little to no desire to get out of bed. Once I was finally able to drag myself out of the house, I got on my way over to camp. Upon arrival, I was ushered under the giant main tent where registration was taking place. Under that tent is where I was introduced to my camper, Indy. When I first met the kid, all I could think about was all the trouble he was going to put me through in the coming month. Little did I know that during that time, Indy would teach me far more than I could’ve ever possibly taught him. When I first met him, I must admit Indy was a bit of a troublemaker. He would run all over the place, making it nearly impossible to keep track of him.
He couldn’t help but to yell at the top of his lungs every time he got excited, and he always seemed to spill something on himself at lunchtime. Not to mention the fact that he would constantly pull the latex of his underwear back simply because he enjoyed the sound of it hitting his skin. As one might assume, not all the other campers were crazy about that last habit of his. Because of his sporadic features, it took a while for the other kids to warm up to him. But over time, everyone grew to love Indy. It was hard not to, he always had a massive smile on his face.
Meeting Indy really helped me put all of my problems into perspective. Indy had all the reasons in the world to be bitter and upset at the situation he was put into. Here I was, completely healthy, yet I spent every waking moment stressing out about high school lacrosse, or where I was going to college, or my personal life. Indy truly helped me appreciate the things I had and not focus on what I didn’t have. Who cared if I wasn’t the best player on my lacrosse team? I was healthy enough to play the sport I loved, and that was more than enough. The fact that I was fortunate enough to be able to go off to college was reason enough to be thankful. And the personal issues I was dealing with at the time? Well, a couple years later, they don’t even cross my mind.
Of course all of the campers at Camp Boomerang had their own disabilities, but not everyone came off as different as Indy did. One specific example of this happened during arts & crafts on one of the first days of camp, while we were making macaroni designs on paper plates. Indy had started laying out the pieces of macaroni to outline a dog, when he thought he was finished already. He yelled “Hey everybody, look at my dog!” as he held up his plate. Unfortunately, none of the macaroni had been glued on yet, and everything fell to the floor. Kids being kids, they started laughing at Indy and called him names. Much to my surprise, Indy did not let out a single tear. The kid immediately laughed it off and continued on with his day, still smiling. As I was on the ground cleaning up his mess, I was perplexed: how is it that a kid so young and impressionable could shrug off an embarrassing moment like that as if it hadn’t even happened? Eventually, we fixed his craft and hung it up on the wall next to all the other kid’s designs. As we walked out of the cabin to go to lunch, I asked Indy why it was that the other kid’s taunting didn’t bother him. He responded simply by telling me that other kids have always cracked jokes at him, and that it wasn’t fun to be unhappy, so he just stopped getting sad when he got picked on. That hit me very hard when I first heard it. How was it that a 7-year-old kid had a better understanding of self-happiness than I did, at the age of 16? Hearing this from Indy prompted me to make some changes about the way I thought. It helped me realize that my own happiness was more important than what any of my peers thought. During my Junior year in high school, I kept what I learned from Indy in the back of my mind. At the time, I was deciding between either staying close to home and playing lacrosse in college, or going to ASU for school. Staying close to home to continue my education was the easy choice, but I knew that out west is where I would be happiest. And as I’m starting my sophomore year here at ASU, I can safely say that I made the right choice, and I have Indy to thank.
