A few years ago, I was back at the first camp I worked at, running some ropes course stuff for a weekend rental. It was a big family picnic and seemed like a mix of fairly decent family-types and neanderthal idiots, as all the weekend rentals are. I had all my ropes gear with me, a few harnesses and carabiners and such… all stuffed into my big beautiful bag. This bag was a custom-designed bag from Timbuk2; a giant messenger bag, with a nice padded back made from a semi-waterproof waxed canvas material, a leather “boot” around the bottom and all sorts of extra pockets including a padded compartment made for laptops. It seemed to be indestructible and almost bottomless. And while I was carrying a ladder and half of the equipment down the hill to the storage shed, it was stolen, with all my equipment in it.
That was tragic, mostly because of the bag, and not the gear. Timbuk2 had stopped making that model of bag, earlier that year. I could no longer get a back with the padded laptop compartment, or the leather boot around the bottom, or even of that exact size. But I managed to find someone on eBay selling a few of them. They were ugly colors and Ballistic Nylon instead of Waxed Canvas and didn’t have the boot option or the extra zippered flat file pocket… but they were the right size, so I bought one.
That bag was decorated with sharpies by my campers almost immediately… I didn’t mind, I figured it’d make it less likely to be stolen with drawings of rats and beavers on it. I also wrote my name and phone number on the inside of it, with a super permanent industrial sharpie. I was back in business with a big ugly bag. I used this bag for everything for quite a while. I always carried it around camp during the summer days. On trips, I could fit my laptop, two or three days worth of clothes and cleanliness essentials as well as all of my camera gear in it. When I worked out at the ropes course, I could fit a full day’s worth of team building props and toys into it… and Ropes is in full swing right now, so that’s the way that bag has been, lately, full of props and supplies for a day of team building.
Unfortunately, the building we use to store our participants lunches and bags, and to eat our own lunches, and for bathrooms, is not ours alone. It becomes the camp office in the summertime. This past weekend, an overzealous employee decided that the camp office needed to be cleaned out and proceeded to throw out everything that was in it, including my bag full of gear. Irreplaceable props, that I’ve used in my team building curriculum for years are now in a dumpster somewhere, probably still in my big orange bag. My big orange bag with the drawings done by my campers and my NAME INSIDE OF IT … is at the bottom of a dumpster somewhere.
When the YMCA says that they instill respect into all of their programs, they apparently don’t mean respect for other employees, departments or the property of those employees or departments. I feel utterly violated, and bagless.
