The Naked Children Are Not Mine.

I don't have children.  I babysit for twin four-year-olds once a week, and while they're pretty awesome, I'm glad that when I go home, they don't come with me, you know? 

Like every single person in my graduating class, I decided I would never have children when I was in freshman biology and we watched The Miracle of Life.  Have you seen it?  It's terrifying.  You watch video footage of a pregnancy from swimming conception to the gory horror of birth.  The c-section in Twilight has nothing on this film for sheer awful birth scenes.  I still shudder to think of it.  (FYI, miracles don't involve uncontrolled bowel movements.)

When I was sixteen, I got my first summer job.  As a camp counsellor.  With children.  It was a bad idea on my part to apply; it was a worse idea on the camp's to hire me.  My interests at that point of my life lay in eating E.L.Fudge cookies and watching Angel, and that was pretty much it.  Twelve squirmy little girls did not make the list.

It was an all-girls camp, and one of the traditions was skinny-dipping.  My co-counsellor and I had no intention of letting our girls do this, so we kept promising that we would go some night that it was warm enough.  In northern Wisconsin, no night is warm enough.  You could see your breath at night, and the ice had melted off the lake only weeks before. 

One day straight up noon, I was leaving camp for my afternoon off.  I was in another counsellor's car, and just as we pulled past my cabin, a line of naked children streaked past.  Apparently, my girls had taken it upon themselves to go skinny-dipping when it was warm enough.

"Keep driving," I said.  "It's my afternoon off, and those are not my naked children."


(True:  A councilor is one who is on a council.  A counselor is one who who will need therapy counselling after working at a summer camp.)

Mya likes kids, and has endless supplies of patience for their hijinks and enthusiasm for their games.  Now if only she could get that surgery!