Suspending Belief, Or Disbelief Has Benefits
Elton John’s “Rocket Man” came on the other day, and I found myself singing along - to myself. When it got to the part about Rocket Man “ burnin’ out his fuse up here alone,” I replaced “fuse” with “shoes” as has been my default since 1978 when my Mishawaka counselor convinced me that this was the lyric. It made no sense. I mean who burns their shoes when they are alone in outer space? But this was the power of suggestion, from a counselor that I admired, and it stuck.
This was the same counselor that convinced a group of us on our 300-mile bike trip that the BeeGees were singing “baldheaded woman”, not “more than a woman” in their eponymous hit single. (Give it a try, you can almost hear it.) We resisted, but in the end many of us bought it, hook, line and sinker. This was also the same counselor who, on that trip, coached and encouraged us through 60 to 80 mile days atop our Schwinn Varsities as we rode the hills of northern Minnesota. “You got this.” “You can do this.” “Nice job!” all also came from his mouth, and just like the pranked lyrics, these refrains have stuck in my head.
I was 13 at the time and had probably not ridden a bike for more than a few miles, let alone 60 miles with panniers and all my kit. It was challenging, to say the least. The big selling point was that for breakfast you would pair off with one of your trip mates and share a box of frosted flakes and a half gallon of chocolate milk, and maybe even a donut or two. This was crack cocaine to my 13 year-old taste buds, but it served to keep us energized, if not a bit too wired. After the first hill of the first day, I began to have serious doubts if I could make it, and I suspect that the counselors were thinking the same thing about my ability to finish the trip. By the end of the trip, we would line up and do push ups as we arrived in our campsite for the night.
I travel many of these same roads today by car, and at the familiar inclines I find myself singing both the funny lyrics and the encouraging refrains. What kids hear at 13 - from someone they admire, stays. At various times in my children’s lives, during various challenges or steep inclines, I offered them the same encouragement, “You got this”, and all the others. I was fortunate that my own parents were some of my biggest cheerleaders, too. But, as we know, this is a parent’s job. While it was these counselors’ job, too, to make sure we completed this trip safely, there is an undeniable benefit to having those words come from someone who doesn’t share your genes.
This is the job of a Camp Mishawaka counselor - to suspend belief, or disbelief, as needed, if just for a bit, as kids realize they can actually “do it.” The stories we tell ourselves, the songs we sing in our head, remain, and I am grateful to have all these in my playlist.
This wasn’t the only time this happened at Camp for me. Once, when we were paddling back from a one-day canoe trip, fighting waves and fatigue, the counselor convinced his boat of 9 year-old paddlers that the float plane circling overhead was a lost WWII bomber, and if we didn’t buckle down and put some muscle into it, we might get strafed! (This was 1974 and probably “OK” for the time. This doesn’t continue…) We got the message and paddled as if our life depended on it. I think we knew this wasn’t some leftover plane from the Big War, but in that moment, suspending disbelief and also believing that we could do this was the message we needed to hear.
Sometimes I think Elton, who probably has more shoes than Imelda Marcos did, maybe really meant to say that Rocket Man was burning his excess shoes up in space. I can’t hear Rocket Man without thinking of this, singing the wrong lyric in my head, and reminding myself with that other song that plays ….”You got this.”
