Not too poud to beg for "my boys."

I mentioned earlier this month that I spent a week every summer for 15 summers working with kids with muscular dystrophy.

Tonight starts the annual MDA Labor Day telethon. I've been watching it since I was a kid.

I was always fascinated by the clips they would show of summer camp. When I had an opportunity in high school to go as a counselor I was thrilled.

It was such an experience. Life changing in many ways.

Over the years I was involved I watched some amazing kids grow. I was lucky to take care of the same little boy, Robert, for six years, from the time he was six until he was 12 and moved on to the big guys cabin.

He graduated from college this year! I'm so proud of him!

He's been in a wheel chair since his early teens. He has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He will eventually die from this. Likely in the next several years. He's one of the luckier ones in that he made it in to his twenties.

I've watched far too many of the boys I've known over the years succumb to their disease. It's devastating to me. I can't imagine how devastating it is to their families.

One of my boys though (I've always called the boys I took care of and the boys that were in my cabin, my boys. Several of them called me "mom." Kinda of a long story about one of the counsellors thinking I was a mom, and then finding out he had a crush on me. He was 17, I was 22. I was flattered. But that's a whole other story) has a different, non-life threatening form of MD and he is all grown up. Jeff. An amazing boy. I found his blog recently and it enthralled me. He is one of a kind!

But I digress. The telethon starts tonight.

I'm going to do a little begging of my own. Please, call in, or check it out online, and give a donation. If you want to make me really happy ask that it go towards research or summer camp.

Every dollar really does count. And I can promise you that it will go to something worth while.

If I can figure out my scanner tomorrow I'll try and get some pics of my years at camp up here for you.