Iwas never that type of kid. You know the type, the ones who are really sweet and volunteer for all those special-needs programs. The girls who give up their summers of fun to work as counselors for kids with special needs. That was never me. Not because I’m not a nice girl. I definitely am. I’m even chesed head in school! It just never even occurred to me to try it. So some of my friends took special kids on outings or worked with autistic kids; I packed boxes for Tomchei Shabbos. No big deal.

The only time I ever felt some stirrings of guilt was in camp. My camp has a special needs program called Ahava and many of those girls are integrated into the regular camp. Plenty of my friends would visit the Ahava bunkhouses during rest hour or stop by their tables at lunch. My friends would always make a point of giving each of those girls a warm greeting when they walked by. I didn’t.

I wasn’t mean. I just didn’t go out of my way to be nice. The truth was that they made me somewhat nervous. All those drooling mouths and the hands that would always touch you and eyes that never made contact. So I just stayed away.

There was one kid, let’s call her Chani, who, for some reason I’ll never understand, attached herself to me. She was very high-functioning and had been in my co-bunk with a shadow one year. Unlike most of the kids in Ahava who were lovable and popular, she wasn’t that well-liked. Perhaps because of her higher intelligence, she couldn’t claim the same innocent cuteness as so many of the girls in her division. She would follow me around, to the increasing frustration of her counselor and me, and consistently invite me to come visit her room whenever she spotted me.

“Devora! Hi!” she would squeal. “Do you want to come to my bunkhouse? I have nosh!”

When I would try to get out of it she would grab my hands and look at me. “Right, we’re friends?”

I was never sure how to answer. So for the most part I tried to ignore her.

It was when Yom Kippur would arrive, just a few short weeks after camp was over, that I would feel somewhat bad about my actions, or lack thereof. I would squirm, remembering how I treated Chani, and form weak resolutions to do better next summer. But next summer was way after Yom Kippur and by then, all those kabbalos I had taken on had long faded away.

This wasn’t a topic that consumed me at all. I had a very busy life and I never spared too much thought to the girl with special needs whom I saw for four weeks every summer. The whole situation was like an itch; something I barely focused on but which irked me when I thought about it… until I moved on.

Then 11th grade rolled around and the staff applications arrived in the mail. I’m usually a decisive person but this year I had no clue what job to apply for. Out of my group of friends, two were not coming back to camp at all. Another had landed the coveted job of assistant play head. And then I found out that my two closest friends were planning on working in Ahava. I sat there sweating over the application, unable to decide. I was torn.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha Jr., Issue 722)