Boston and Atlantic City

Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. My life has been crazy and I just never really found the time to sit down, let alone type up an update. I’ve been on two trips since my last update… I went to Boston with a group of teenagers and I just got back yesterday from Atlantic City. The dynamics of the Boston trip were very different because the teens are generally higher functioning. I felt like I was more of a chaperone on a middle school band trip or something like that. We had a lot of fun in Boston though! We got to go to the aquarium (with IMAX theater), went to Salem to see the Salem Witch Trial Museum, took a trolley tour of the entire city, and we got to take a little hour-long cruise on the harbor. The participants were very high-energy and had lots of fun with all the activities: A was a welcome change considering the majority of Sprout trips can tend to be lethargic with the way things flow. Other than a few accidents and a participant waking up the leaders at 5:30AM by pounding on our hotel door in his underwear, the trip had very few hiccups. After Boston, I went to good old Atlantic City. If you have never been to Atlantic City, but love nasty prostitutes, sketchy drug dealers, and very shady, dirty places, you are missing out on the time of your life. Atlantic City was just plain disgustingly vile. Apparently, since it is still the off season and there aren’t a lot of tourists there for the beach, the entire population is a mirror image of Cops(the tv show) or angry, angry old people that don’t let anything get between them and a nasty case of tendonitis from playing slots all day, everyday. Some elderly lady screamed her dentures off at me because some of our participants were standing between slots and she couldn’t get by quick enough. As I usually tend to do, I had an extremely odd and pain in the ass incident on this trip. One morning I get a call from a couple of my clients down the hall that some lady is offering them sex and blowjobs. I didn’t know what I had coming. I show up to their room and they tell me some lady with a see-through shirt and leather pants pushed open their hotel door and wouldn’t leave them alone about giving her “services.” So I go down the hall looking for our very forward friend and find a hooker that can only be described as… well… nauseatingly disgusting. This is where I simultaneously made my first mistake and learned my first lesson of the trip: 1.Never try to reason with a prostitute. There is no such thing as reasoning with a damn prostitute… they just don’t think the way normal people do. I asked her kindly if she would please leave my participants alone and she promptly yelled that they approached her and were saying nasty things to her and she didn’t appreciate it. Apparently, the prostitute was using the room across the hall in the hotel to host her…clients. She saw that our participants’ doors were cracked so that we could help them get ready in the morning and immediately assumed (as any whore would) that meant they wanted her to open their door and were interested in her services. After she told me that they approached her, I told her I didn’t believe her but if they did it again, just to ignore them. She said ok, but I think she was just in a hurry since she was walking with a client (hers not Sprout’s) to her room. I went back to the leaders’ room assuming the problem was over. Mistake and lesson 2: If you think that you have just successfully reasoned with a hooker, you yourself are horribly nieve and ignorant. After dealing with two participants that ran outside to smoke without asking, I was walking back through the hall when I found my new favorite friend (sarcasm… extreme sarcasm) standing in the hall outside my participants’ room smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer (it’s 9 in the morning). I immediately knew that the issue had just taken a turn for the worst since my participants had locked themselves in their room and were crying. I asked what happened and they told me she came back and wouldn’t leave them alone. I was starting to get really pissed with the ‘walking STD’ and asked what the hell she was doing. I said “I thought I told you to not to talk to my participants. In fact, I told you to leave them alone. What the hell are you doing knocking on their door?” Mistake and lesson 3: trying to understand the thought process of a hooker. Her response was simple and maybe it’s my fault for not understanding “I isn’t contacting them, I is just knocking on they door to see if they is needing something… you know, services.” Just as I’m really starting to get fed up with the hooker, my co-leader Jonathan walks up and tells me he found the prostitute in our room going through our bags. It turns out that when she wouldn’t leave my participants alone, they told her to go to my room (which is very smart of them). She went to our room and since the door was cracked and we were helping people in other rooms get ready, this clearly meant that we wanted her to go through our bags while we weren’t there. Luckily, Jonathan walked in before she had time to get to anything. So I try and figure out what the hell is going on in this girl’s head (refer to mistake 3). If you don’t have any previous experience speaking with hookers, it is very hard to get anything accomplished because every other sentence was “They need lovin’ or do you all need some services?” I really wanted to just smack her and say shut the hell up, I’m trying to figure out why the hell you were going through my shit and all you can think about is servicing mentally disabled people. I decided that the best thing was probably to call the Police who came and threatened her while the hotel management kicked her out of the hotel. Saying goodbye to her was less than difficult. Now that issue was finally done with, I was able to return to my usual Sprout duties of handing out 400 meds to 7 different people, 8 different times during the day, for 4 days. Now this brings me to my 4th and final mistake and lesson. 4: just don’t go to Atlantic City. Of course I forgot to mention that I have another trip planned to head there next Monday with a group. Luckily we are staying outside of the strip so we shouldn’t have any of those same problems. If nothing else, Sprout provides me with an immense amount of patience and some of the best and strangest learning experiences known to man (as well as some really damn good stories). I’m working at the Sprout film festival this weekend which is Sprout sponsored and shows movies made by, staring, and about mentally and developmentally disabled people. I’m really looking forward to it and spending some more time in the city this weekend before I head out Monday. I get back Wednesday and then next Sunday, I go on a Bahamas Cruise with a group…you’re jealous, I know! I will try to keep everyone updated! Take it easy and remember these important lessons!

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