Summer Leaders

At the Nature Park, we have summer programmes run by two students and at the Museum they have the same deal.
Today, the summer programme groups from the Museum came to the Nature Park and I gave them a guided tour. I suppose that all the community group programmes I do during the summer are someone else's programmes.

The university students run them, the primary school pupils are signed up.

Our own summer leaders had the annoyance yesterday of a group of mainly six-year olds with one thirteen-year old girl in it.
'How could the parents have thought this was a good idea?' I asked.
'Oh, she's a home-stay girl,' they said,
'And that is....?'
'A Korean girl who...well it's kind of like an exchange only without the exchange bit. The family here gets paid, and then they put her in our programme and pay less than they are getting paid,'
'I...THINK I see,'
'But also, because she's Korean, she's fourteen there,'
'Er...pardon?' (Is this like dress sizes, I wonder,)
'They count lunar months, so she's 14 in Korea, but 13 here,'
That blew a few diodes in my brain.

To increase the feeling of cross fertilisation today, several of the kids had been to one of my school programmes.
'You're that bee,' said one, who felt that gave her the right to hold my hand.
'Yes, which bee was I?' I asked, removing my hand,
'The worker,' hand slips back.
This went on most of the way around the trail, with a brief respite when we went through the coyote tunnel.

I told them about some plant or other and one of their leaders, in that sing-song valley way of speaking, where the end of each sentence becomes a question, asked a real one.
'One time [at band camp] I was out right, and I brushed against some plants, like this [demonstrates brushing against plants] and I came up in a rash right?Like...all over my hand, like this [demonstrates what she means by 'all over her hand']So...my question is..... do you know what it was?'
I set my face to 'kill' but she didn't drop, so I reset to 'you effing moron,' but she still looked at me expectantly like a large-eyed puppy.
'Well,' I said, trying to banish the sarcasm from my voice, 'it could have been one of the plants that affects everyone, like poison-ivy or nettles, or it could have been any plant at all that you just happen to be allergic to.'
She nursed her hand as though it had just happened.

At the end of the tour, the other leader asked them to thank me. The girl who had kept holding my hand launched herself at me and hugged.
I pretended I wasn't there.

When we went to Granville Island with Austen and Sue, I had taken Holly to the toilet.
Inside, there were two cubicles. One was occupied and the occupant's friend was standing outside. It was a first-time-tampon situation. Very soon, the whole toilet queue was coaching.
'Why can't she just use a towel...er napkin?' I asked,
'We're summer leaders,' said the girl, 'and we have to go swimming with the kids,'
'Ah,'
'Try squatting,' said another woman,
'Squat,' reinforced the friend.
Inside the girl was groaning,
'It hurts, it hurts sooooo much...'
Eventually the mission was accomplished and the girl came out, unembarrassed that all these women had been involved in this rite of passage.
And good for her.