No Box Summer Camp

I'll bet you don't see a photo like this around your place of work much. This is what ignoring the box looks like.

During the week of July 21, the Amputee Coalition of America (ACA) held their summer youth camp at the Joy Outdoor Education Center, just north of Cincinnati. The campers were kids aged 10 – 16, who have been missing limbs since birth or because of cancer, accidents, or even gunshot wounds.

Besides the traditional camping activities, they had the opportunity to participate in a ropes course, a series of challenging activities, connected together by wires and ropes, A typical activity might be inching across a balance beam, or walking a shaky tightrope with a very loose rope as the only handhold. As tame as these may sound, they suddenly become much more challenging, if not terrifying, when they are 25 or so feet in the air. We have worked with countless adult groups who have to muster up some real courage to participate.

So here we have kids, some who are frightened by height and all who are missing a limb or two, doing the high ropes course.

Now wait a darn minute. A high ropes
course is hard enough for people with arms and hands and legs. This can’t be done by kids with amputations! But it can. And it was. Try this one on for size. One 13 year old got about half way through an activity, when – gasp – his artificial leg fell off, landing 30 feet below. With a No Box spirit, he matter-of-factly responded, "I’ll finish without the leg."

Adults who are stuck in a box can produce some truly whiny excuses to avoid a challenge like this. I don’t have enough upper body strength, my legs are too short, I am too overweight, blah, blah, blah. Think about the excuses some of these kids could have come up with. "Uh, I am wearing a leg prosthesis” or “I am missing a couple of arms.” But they didn’t.

Hooray for everyone, especially these kids, who prove that limits imposed by the box of conventional thinking can indeed be ignored. Don't let the box keep you from being great.

Learn more about ACA www.amputee-coalition.org or Camp Joy www.joec.org

To enjoy some video: http://www.local12.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=31120@video.wkrc.com

Steve