Episode Details
Back to Episodes74 Internal Chaos and Blending vs. Internal Peace and Integration
Episode 74
Published 4 years, 9 months ago
Description
- Intro: It is good to be together, thank you for joining me today in this podcast episode
- I want to take you back 40 years with me, more than 40 years, to 1981, and share with you an experience I had as a lad, share with you a story and images of that story that will help us understand the topic of today's podcast. So, without any further delays, its Story Time with Dr. Peter
- Its early July 1981, I'm 12 years old, really skinny, about 5 foot 5, 110 lbs, very nearsighted without my glasses swimming to the green raft with my swim buddy at Camp Onaway on the Waupaca Chain of Lakes, in central Wisconsin
- Taking on the challenge. I'm the lowest form of life at Boys Brigade Camp 3, A first-year boy. I'm a FLIC-- A FLIC is an acronym that stand for "Fat Little Ignorant Camper" the term of affection, a sweet, ironic endearment bestowed on us by our fearless camp leaders.
- And I’m swimming out to the raft to test my mettle with the bigger boys. The high schoolers.
- The raft -- floating platform, 12 X 12, buoyed up by sealed 55 gallon drum, anchored in 12 feet of clear water and covered with green indoor-outdoor carpeting.
- That is the place where the game "King of the Raft" was played by the camp 3 FLICs of all ages and body shapes.
- The objective of King of the Raft was simple. To be the only boy left standing on the raft, with all challengers in the water.
- To do that, you want to push, pull, toss, hurl, lure or otherwise maneuver all the other boys off the raft. A sparse game would have six boys, a real showdown might have 24, ranging in age from the youngest at 12 to highly muscled 17 year old incoming high school seniors with mustaches.
- Very few rules and all of them were unwritten. The primary one was no dragging another boy along on the raft, because that indoor/outdoor carpeting can tear the skin right off your back or chest very quickly, especially if the victim is struggling with all his might, as he should be, and as was the norm, And no choking and no hitting or kicking anyone in the groin. That was about it. Otherwise it was a free for all, with shoving and pushing and lunging and clinging and teams of boys working together and alliances broken by Machiavellian tricks all for the great prize of being able to stand, alone, on the raft, with all your companions in the water and to beat your chest and yell with all your might at the top of your lungs, "I am the King of the Raft!"
- Now occasionally, a gargantuan 16 or 17 year old would dominate the raft and be obnoxious as king, and then two of the 20 or 30 something year old camp leaders would swim out to administer a form of camp justice and dethrone the obnoxious king by heaving him in a remarkable high trajectory to a watery landing many feet from the 144 square feet of green carpeted real estate.
- Then the game changed. Then it was get the leaders time and the game moved into another phase when all the fat little ignorant campers had a chance to take on the two leaders, and a battle royale ensued with the campers on one side and the leaders on the other.
- I did this for seven summers. From 1981 to 1987, five years as a camper and two years as a leader. And I learned a lot of life lessons on the raft, both as a skinny, vanquished, frequently airborne FLIC and as king.
- So I hope I was able to create a word picture for you, some images of what it was like on the raft at Camp Onaway on the Waupaca chain of lakes in the 1980s. We going to come back to the images of king of the raft later in the episode.
- Intro -- Welcome to Interior Integration for Catholics
- I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and the reason this Interior Integration for Catholics podcasts exists is to help you toward loving God, neighbor and yourself in an ordered, healthy, holy way. -- It's about tolerating being loved, and about loving.