What's That Pig Outdoors? by Henry Kisor Page B

watched over by one or two lifeguards.
    Of course, none of these arguments were available to me at the time, and even if they had been, nobody in a remote country-club boardroom was going to listen to the wild imaginings of a sixteen-year-old boy. Fortunately the staff at the Evanston Y had a different viewpoint, and the hurt soon healed.
    For several years the staff at the Y had watched me grow. I’d spent all my summers at Camp Echo, first as a camper and then as a “counselor-in-training” and as a member of the kitchen crew. It was not difficult to perform those responsibilities, and as Sam Williamson and my other classmates applied for jobs as full counselors, so did I. It never occurred to me that my deafness might prove a problem.
    I don’t know precisely how the Y officials felt about my lack of hearing, but like the school authorities, they seemed open-minded enough to allow me to try one step at a time, and if I negotiated it successfully, to go on to the next. For four summers, beginning in 1957, I played barracks sergeant to a dozen thirteen-and fourteen-year-old-hearing boys. I was, I think, as adept as any other counselor, and the problems I had seemed no different from anyone else’s.
    The only limitation the camp director imposed on me as a staff member was to excuse me from lifeguarding duties. “I know you can do the job,” he said, “but if our insurance agent visited camp and found a deaf guy being a lifeguard, what’s he going to think? He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t have time to be convinced; He’s going to raise our rates through the roof.”
    It was easier for me to accept that pragmatic decision because I had another waterfront responsibility that was just as heavy: while other counselors stood lifeguard duty at the swimming area, I ran the water-skiing program outside it. Much of the time I’d drive the tow boat, instructing skiers with hand signals. Sometimes I’d stand in the water by the dock, helping novices learn the complex and unfamiliar skill of getting up on skis. Either way, I was responsible for their safety. Nobody thought my deafness a liability on the lake outside the boundaries of the swimming area. Maybe the noise of the tow boat’s outboard motor made hearing an academic issue. In any case, I never felt that anyone patronized my abilities.
    Except for me. My long-simmering fear of speaking in public led me, that first summer as a counselor, to hobble myself needlessly. It happened when another counselor, a quiet and popular fellow of college age who suffered from a terrible stammer, froze one morning while trying to deliver the brief chapel homily with which the camp began its day. Nakedly, agonizingly, he stood before some 150 campers and counselors, the sweat bursting from his brow, trying to get out the first word. Minutes passed. He tried, and tried again, his face flushing with humiliation. Finally an older counselor stood up, squeezed his arm in commiseration, spoke a few words, and quietly dismissed the assembly.
    A few of the younger campers may have snickered, but most of us sat in silent sympathy. We liked Pat, and we didn’t know what to do. I suffered with him. I knew what was going through his mind. When he disappeared that night, abandoning his job to wrestle with his devils, I wasn’t surprised. That could have been me up there, I thought. Maybe I would have frozen, too. The next day I stopped the director and told him that what had happened to Pat might happen to me, too. Could he excuse me from giving chapel and speaking before assemblies?
    He did. That may not have been the wise thing to do. Maybe he should have insisted, “No, Hank. You can do it, and I don’t want to hear any more of that nonsense.” Just the same, there was nobody to blame but myself. I was responsible for my own actions.
    Later in the summer, however, the director made an astute decision on the only other