| | Camp Real World Par 1Camp Real World: Finding The Light
(Part 1 of a 2-Part Autobiographical Series)
BY RAY CP STAFF WRITER
This past week, I was off site for three days. I wanted to share with
you guys a little about my adventures. I think it's important.
Tuesday morning I woke up and drove to Argyle, Texas to a camp ground
out in the middle of no where. Ask Reg...I swear my cell phone didn't
work worth a crap. LOL Now why would I go to such a God forsaken
location? I went to a seminar called "The Real World Experience".
Basically the entire trip was to help blind and legally blind people
learn the skills they need to live on their own after high school. I am
legally blind. I have trouble seeing things that the average person
doesn't.
Now, I am not fully blind. Trust me, there is a difference. To help you
understand this better, let's try this. most of you CP members use
what's called the "Default Skin". I don't. Go down to the bottom left
of any page on the forum and pull down that drop down box. It's a list
of skins. The very last one is called "Pie Version". I use that one.
Reg put that together for me a few days ago. That's the type of set up
I need to see the forum. Okay, now you can switch back. LOL I know...I
know...the colors are insane, but I do what I have to do to do things I
love. That's what this trip was all about, learning to be as "normal"
as possible by finding ways around stuff. I can do almost everything
you can...I just do it a little slower and differently.
Moving on...
I was actually late to camp. LOL Mom was sick. She had one of those
crummy migraine thingees, I had once. They are bad. When I got there,
we had steak for lunch. Usually I don't like camp food, but this was
good steak.
After lunch we went into a huge room and were divided into teams. My
team had me, and 2 blind boys around 15 years old. First, we had to
name our team. I spent a few minites listening to ideas and didn't
really like any they had, so I offered mine. I said, "We could be the
Dallas Cowboys!" LOL They jumped on that and we talked about football.
We did a few activities to help us get to know each other.
We then had to share our dream. I said mine was to report on NFL teams
for ESPN or something. They liked this idea. We had a speaker talk to
us about our dreams and how we can still accomplish them even if we are
blind. She told us we are just as good as other people and may even
have insights they didn't have. I am not sure I believe this, but you
know...I can learn to change how I think.
We told the group what we do in our free time and I got to talk a bit
about Cowboys Pride, Steeler Addicts, The Deck, and TSZ. I said I
worked on CP and hung out a lot on the other three. LOL I guess they
found this cool cuz after that I got a lot of questions. I became known
as "Football Chick". LOL The lecture was kinda dull, but what lecture
isn't?
After that, we went swimming. I brought my football to camp cuz
football makes me happy and in all honesty, I really didn't want to go
at all. I like to pretend I don't have eye problems and doing this
stuff sorta flies in the face of that ideology. So I took my football
to the pool. It ended up being a cool thing cuz I played with some guys
and then we found duct tape and a bell to put on it so that the blind
kids could play too. We divided into teams and played in the water. I
was QB. I never liked that part cuz I cant throw very accurately, but
we all had bells on our arms too, so I could hear where each receiver
was and didn't miss a pass. I used in the game some of the info from
Coach Bartel's lesson....like personell packages and such. My team won
by one touchdown, so YAY!!!! We were the Cowboys...the other team was
the Steelers. LOL.
After that, we went and tried to figure out a bus schedule. These are
hard to do with so many confusing numbers and stuff. We were gunna
travel into Dallas the next day and the staff wanted us to plan the
trip and tell them how much money we needed. My team, the Cowboys did
great. I did the bus part and my friend Aikman (we gave ourselves
names) did the money part. I (I was Emmitt) and the other kid (Deion
Sanders) thought Aikman should be a mathematician. He said, "Heck no".
As blind people, we rely a lot on other people to help us get where we
need to go and sometimes we have to take public transportation. I have
never done this before and was kinda scared. I thought I might get lost.
After that, we had down time. I went and played this game called
"Chutes and Ladders". The board had raised parts so blind people could
feel the game. It was cool, but I hate the game. Spending an hour going
back and forth up and down by luck is annoying. There's no skill
involved. The game could go on for ever.
After that I called Reg. I was upset cuz I missed the forum and still didn't see the point in going on this trip.
It rained a lot and I got muddy. Who knew it would rain this much. The camp was like a swamp. hah
We went to bed at 12am. The girls had a brand new cabin. It was
great....very fancy. Downside was, I got stuck with three die hard
Longhorn fans. AHHHH!!
This ends day one. This is a long story, so I'm splitting it into two parts.
Stay tuned for part 2
Join cowboyspride.net to see more great articles like this from our oustandign writing team!! Its fast and its free. There is no off season with cowboys pride. Just use this link
http://www.cowboyspride.net/forum/index.php?referrerid=81
or put Ray as your referrer
and join the fun
part 2 comming soon
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| | Posted 7/7/2007 1:37 AM - 12 views - 0 comments
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