I think I can I think I can

Well, this past week at camp might have been Pocahontas' tipping point. She pretty much went nuts.

Camp isn't school. Her school is well-stocked and well-run. They have definite things to work with, like numbers of kids.

We just don't. Try as we might, we can't get the correct numbers of how many children we're trying to feed.

Monday, we were told the prior week, we'd be feeding 142 for the week. Well, Monday morning at breakfast, the line suddenly petered out. It was like, "hey, guys, send in the next cabin -- we're ready!"

And there were no more. We'd served 105 people, which, as you might remember from math class, is <142.

So Pocahontas went on the warpath, so to speak, and demanded to know how many kids were in camp that day. 105. So at lunch, we prepared for that and it went OK. Dinner, too.

The next day, we prepared for 105 and pretty much ran out -- had to cook something else on the fly. After much ado, she got a new number from the administrator guy, the one who'd previously given her the 142 number.

Pocahontas, meanwhile, is flipping out and not listening to me try to explain some things to her, like the day camp variation. See, during day camp, even though kids sign up for the week, that doesn't mean they're there all week. It's summer, and many times, the families take long weekends, meaning they're out of day camp either Monday or Friday.

And I'm pretty sure that's what happened, because instead of asking what the count for the week was supposed to be, Pocahontas asked how many kids were there that day. We'd had over 10 kids not show up, and the person she asked didn't understand she was really being asked the bigger question.

And that's continued. I'm trying to get Pocahontas to understand she needs to ask the one camp administrator the questions, because everyone else just speculates. There are a few people (three) who can speculate with a greater degree of accuracy, but the administrator guy is the one who knows. No one else can even guess.

So even though it's unprofessional for the administrator to give us such grossly wrong numbers, it doesn't help to grill other people on what we're being told. They don't know and they get baffled as to why they're asked.

I talked to the person who was doing weekend camp this week, for example, and she told me she heard she would have fewer than 10 campers. I relayed the information to Pocahontas, who was later given a count of 33. I said that seemed wrong, could we question it? We did, and got the old "we already told you..." lecture.

By Friday, though, they'd corrected the count to 23, and then, when the weekend person came in for her instructions, it was further reduced to 17. She's not the one reducing it, though -- the administrator is. She doesn't know.

Friday, in general, was a nightmare. We'd previously been told 100 for lunch, which isn't even mathmatically possible. I brought this up as soon as I got the number from Pocahontas, saying the most possible was 80, because 60 day campers max plus 20 staff members is 80. And we don't have 60 day campers right now; it's more like 45.

But the number stood -- for awhile. By Friday morning, we pried again, and got the number to 70. Which is WAY less than 100, especially when you have pre-cooked two pizza slices for each person. It takes a long, long time to do that, and it's really annoying to have to go back and re-store the food.

But two additional things happened to further sent Pocahontas down the path to insanity, and most of it was because she simply tunes me out. I've, this entire time, been telling her how the counts are impossible and too high, but she doesn't listen to me at all. She looks like she is, but later, when something else is introduced, she'll say, "Well, you never told me that!"

Which is what happened when, just before lunch, someone wandered in and said -- not to her but within earshot -- that a group of kids was going out to lunch.

My God, she flipped. Completely flipped. She ran out of the kitchen to the nearest people with "staff" shirts on and got into their faces, saying, "HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL BE HERE FOR LUNCH?" She just yelled at them. She kept repeating this group was going out to eat, why didn't someone tell her, she'd been told to cook for 100, etc.

NEVER MIND the fact that, and I had been telling her this as soon as she overheard the exchange, that the group of people in question NEVER eats with us on Fridays. Never. Yes, the count is wrong, but it already was wrong. My estimate of 45 or so campers plus 20 staff members, which I'd been chanting pretty much as a mantra, didn't include that group of people because it NEVER does. But she refused to listen to me and essentially verbally assaulted these other people -- who had no idea. I knew, and I told her, but she refused to listen.

And not 10 minutes later, when she calmed down from that (someone else mentioned to her that the group of people never ate Friday lunches with the group. When I mentioned I'd said that, she actually said, "No, you didn't.) someone else came in and asked for 29 forks and napkins for lunch.

And, without listening to anything else, she flipped again. Just completely went off. And I just calmly asked, "Is that just day camp?" And the answer was yes. She was in charge of day camp that day and, in her mind, that's all she was responsible for. The leader didn't know -- or care, really -- about any other groups eating.

As I was trying to explain to Pocahontas the girl meant day camp only, she kept up basically this insane woman chant about wrong counts, groups eating elsewhere, etc. I kept calmly reassuring her that the count was only for day camp and not for staff.

We wound up feeding 60, which was essentially my estimate.

To her credit, Pocahontas puts up with a lot of crap. Unfortunately, she's lost her filter for it. She's got so much thrown at her she has no idea who's right, wrong and who's simply stuttering out an answer to get rid themselves of the lady screaming in their face.

The administrator has no business being in charge. I mean, the two people in charge cannot count the number of children in camp. How basic is that? We are getting different numbers all the time, and they vary widely. But you can't ask people who don't have the facts to give them to you. They can speculate, but if you want accountability you have to go to the top.

Pocahontas doesn't quite grasp the concept of how the camp operates. Having been through training and also associating with people outside of the kitchen, I know a lot more of what goes on. But I also pay attention to the kids as they come through. I listen.

She pretends to, but doesn't really - or at least it seems to me. She gave one of the Hungarian kids a hard time about asking for something at breakfast. She and I had switched places and instead of me asking one by one, "Do you want this? Do you want that?" and showing it to him, she kind of hit him with a rapid-paced barrage. He didn't understand. I jumped in and said he wanted everything but grits and she said, "He should answer me for himself!"

I wasn't sure if she knew he was one of the foreign kids and whispered in her ear after he left that he didn't understand much English. She said, "Well, he should know by now." Good Lord.

The next day, when he came through, she was nicer and tried to play. She asked him, "What's my name?" and gave him a hard time. But when I looked at her and said, "What's HIS name?" she kind of got quiet. She knows no names -- everyone, for some reason, is "baby." It's a little offending to the over 14 crowd. She also likes to call me "Mommy," and she's done that to a few of the adults, too.

Maybe by the end of camp, she'll get the hang of the differences between day and residential camp. I always think it's funny when she screws up because she makes a big deal about "knowing all my babies."

Last week, one of the groups came through the line at breakfast and she gave them a big, hearty "Good morning" and then added, "How did you like my wonderful dinner last night?"

They just stared at her and I whispered, "They're day camp; they weren't here for dinner."