One effect of losing your day job is that you begin to reflect on past work experiences. At least, that’s been an effect on me these last few months.
A recent reflection took me back to one of my earliest jobs. During my high school and college years, I worked as a summer camp lifeguard. I spent most of those summers at Camp Long Point, a Salvation Army sleep-away camp on Seneca Lake, one of New York’s Finger Lakes.
The Sweet Lifeguard Life

[1996?]
Talk about a job I loved! I got to sit by a pool and tan while “working.” In the afternoons and evenings, we gave canoe lessons and took kids on pontoon boat rides around the lake. In our downtime, we hung out with other support staff, which usually led to games, pranks, and … other summer activities. The best part of it all was that I wasn’t a counselor who had to put up with hot, tired, cranky campers.
Campers almost always listened to lifeguards, whether on or off duty. Every kid wanted to go in the pool, even—sometimes especially—if they didn’t know how to swim. I could quiet a group of unruly campers simply by sauntering among them, looking around with my dark, head-wrapping sunglasses, and adopting a dour frown. Nobody wanted to jeopardize swim time. Lifeguards were perhaps the most respected staff members at camp. And we might have been the cockiest because of it.
My last couple summers at camp, I became the waterfront director and had the opportunity to learn a few things about leadership. Mundane administrative things like scheduling shifts, keeping records, and creating policies and procedures. Also really difficult things, like firing one of my closest friends because I discovered the alcohol he kept in his room (a big no-no even if he hadn’t been underage). And even personal things, like dealing with feelings of betrayal while simultaneously experiencing unjustified guilt that I was somehow disloyal to my friend by reporting his violation.
I learned positive things, too, one of which I didn’t even realize fully until my recent reflections. It’s something that I think I’ve known for a long time, but I haven’t consciously considered how much of an impact it had on me until now.
Carnival Games
Every evening at camp we had an “evening program,” something that engaged all the campers in a common activity. It gave them a chance to socialize, and our eternal hope was that it would tire them out before they went to bed.
Evening programs varied quite a bit. We did team games like Capture the Flag, talent shows, and themed dances like Sock Hops or 80s Night, among other things. We spent some evenings at the fire circle singing songs, telling stories, and putting on skits. There was even an annual “Miss Long Point” drag contest conducted (mostly) by male staff members, which I’m confident was not officially sanctioned but still happened every year I worked there. We had phone-it-in backup programs, as well, like projecting a Disney movie on a big screen in the chapel if a thunderstorm stymied our planned evening.

[Oct. 2020]
One favorite program among campers was the carnival, which always happened on Sunday. Carnival consisted of low-tech games like water balloon toss or knocking plastic bowling pins over with a baseball, as well as activities like face painting, a makeshift water slide, and possibly a petting zoo—depending on the nature director’s ability to keep captive animals alive. The kids would run around, play games, and win tickets that they traded in for cheap prizes and treats.
As a support staff member, I disliked carnivals. They required more setup than other programs, which we had to undertake after we completed our primary duties for the day. For the effort, you got to monitor your assigned game for the duration of the carnival, repeating instructions and handing out tickets to the campers who won. This was followed by cleanup and resetting your area for the following day.
I know, I know, all of that is what working is. It doesn’t mean I had to like it!
However, in my fifth or sixth year at camp, my friend Dave and I hit upon something that made the carnival experience much better—for us, at least. We created a new came called:
Figure It Out.1
Figure It Out: The Game
The great premise of Figure It Out was simple: We’d gather a mishmash of carnival game fare—say a hula hoop, two bowling pins, and a volleyball—and throw them on the ground in our stall or area. When a camper asked how to win the game, we’d reply in unison:
“FIGURE IT OUT!”
That was all the instruction we’d give them. We repeated it to every follow-up question they asked us.
Our actual rules, which we never told the campers, went something like this:
Advantage always went to the first kid, who would usually do something obvious. Bowling pins and a volleyball? Easy: Set up the pins, knock them down. That kid got a ticket.
Very often, however, the second kid walked away without a ticket, because they’d copy what the first kid did. When we declined to give them a ticket, they’d feel confused, mad, and betrayed. If they asked why the kid before them got a ticket and they didn’t, we’d repeat: “Figure it out!”
Some of those kids got back in line. Others walked away to find a game with clearer rules.
The great thing was that it didn’t take long for the kids to figure it out! By the third or fourth kid, they usually understood that they had to do something different than the kid before them. Often, they shared that information with the other kids further back in line, giving them more time to come up with their own approach to the game.
Figure It Out tended to progress something like this:
- Kid 1: Uses the objects to play a simple, obvious carnival game. Gets a ticket.
- Kid 2: Copies Kid 1. Does not get a ticket.
- Kid 3-4: Figures out that they need to do something different, so they set up some other game with the objects. Gets a ticket.
- Kids 5-8: Puts their own variations on the games Kids 1 and 3 set up. Mostly they get tickets, unless we deem their version of the game too similar to one already played.
- Kid 9-15: Somewhere in here, some kid does something not even remotely game-like, such as holding the bowling pins up to their mouth like walrus teeth and barking at us. We laugh and give the kid 5 tickets.
At this point, the kids tended to think we were doing a “hot and cold” game, where they’d get more tickets if they figured out what specific activity we wanted them to do. But that was not the goal of Figure It Out, either. Inevitably, another kid would try the walrus teeth thing, and they’d feel like Kid 2 at the start of the game when we sent them away with no tickets.
Yes, our judgment was subjective and often arbitrary. And yes, whatever word you’re thinking of to describe Dave and I right now is probably accurate.
As the carnival wore on, word would spread among the campers that the funnier, crazier, and more creative they acted, the more tickets we’d hand out. By the end of the evening, kids would be going to great lengths to make us laugh and praise them for their creativity.
I’d like to claim that we were imparting some great lesson about life, enjoyment, or even economics. In reality, Dave and I were just trying to turn something tedious and uninteresting into something entertaining and exciting.
We were playing Figure It Out ourselves.
Figuring It Out Moment by Moment
The realization I had recently when reflecting on my camp days was that we never actually Figure It Out. Or to put it another way, life is just a constant game of Figure It Out.
I don’t mean to say that we don’t figure things out. I figure new things out every day, it seems. And I re-figure old things out more often than I care to admit.
But like that old camp carnival game, the “It” that we have to figure out is a constantly shifting goal. It can also feel arbitrary, subjective, and unfair, at times.
I’ve become more and more convinced of late that every new moment is unprecedented. Every moment is a new occurrence, set within a new set of circumstances and predicated on new conditions.
For the determinists out there, I’m not claiming that every moment is isolated without antecedents. Certainly, each moment arises out of the things that came before it. But every moment is unprecedented, because there has never been a moment like it before.
Take age as an example. You’re never the same age as you were a moment ago, nor will you be again. As the They Might Be Giants song “Older” goes:
You’re older than you’ve ever been,
And now you’re even older,
And now you’re even older,…
And now you’re older still.
This is true with every other dimension of life, as well. It applies to little things: perhaps you added just a tad more cream to your coffee than you did the day before. Or perhaps you added the same amount, but it’s not literally the same cream you had yesterday, because that cream is digested by now.
It also applies to massive things: political shifts, cultural movements, and media releases that have far- and long-reaching impacts.
To paraphrase a popular adage: history may rhyme, but it never repeats.
This idea of the unprecedented moment is scalable. It works on an individual level, a group level, and a global level. It even works on both the quantum and the cosmic levels. Stars, planets, and other celestial bodies are never in the same position, though they may look so from our perspective on Earth. As for yourself, the cells and atoms that make you up are constantly being replaced throughout your life. (Cue “Ship of Theseus” reference.)
This idea can be overwhelming to some and invigorating to others. If you’re like me, it oscillates between those extremes. Because while new moments give us new opportunities to Figure It Out, they also gives us new chances to Fuck It Up.
The good news is that you get to decide for yourself what both Figure It Out and Fuck It Up mean. If you do Fuck It Up, you immediately get a new chance to Figure It Out.
And unlike those campers at the Sunday carnival, you don’t need to entertain capricious, self-absorbed lifeguards in their late teens and early twenties.
Thankfully, neither do I.
Figure It Out with Me
Well, maybe I do need to appease one of them, or at least the older version of him.
I’ve always been drawn to the quirky, arcane, and surreal. I don’t expect that to change as I Figure It Out further. I suppose that makes me still a little self-absorbed—but then, everyone is a bit, right?
I’m the only person I have to spend all my time with, after all.
I’ve got a lot more ideas on how to Figure It Out. I’ll be sharing them in the coming weeks and months.
In the meantime, thank you for reflecting with me
Notes
- This game had nothing to do with the short-lived late-90’s Nickelodeon show of the same name. Ours came first! (I think.) ↩︎