SMC 2006

Well, I’m back and I survived another week at camp. Actually, despite the heat, it wasn’t that hard to survive. Yes, we did have temperatures well into the 100’s most of the week (it was 115 one day), and the A/C was broken in the mess hall/chapel for two days, but other than that, it was a really good week.

I had a great cabin of girls this year. They were all great – definitely the best cabin I have ever had. They were where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there and never gave us any trouble. I did have to go looking for a girl one night, but she just turned out to be clueless, but it only happened once. They did keep me awake a lot, but that wasn’t their fault, most of the bunks in our cabin squeaked every time someone moved.

My family group (not that same as my cabin group) was a little trying, but not too bad either. They seriously had a case of ADD. I just had a really hard time clicking with this family group – and that isn’t normally the case.

But this was the year for camp pranks. As I have learned from some other counselors this year, camp pranks are not acceptable at every camp, but they have traditionally been a part of ours. Anything destructive and hurtful has never been tolerated, but harmless ornery stuff has always been a part of the norm. My co-counselor is infamous on the girl’s side (and well, I’ve learned from the best and can always hold my own). I’m not necessarily involved in one every year because a good prank can’t be planned, but must present itself naturally – but I have been involved in enough that people get nervous when I disappear for too long.

This year just seemed to be the year to try to out-do every prank from the past. I have to give kudos to some of the senior boys. One night, they took the floating dock from the lake and moved it to a small fishing pond near by. What was even funnier was watching them try to put it back because they had to carry it up a very steep hill to get it back in the lake. Then there was the night they “stole” the extra fridge out of the canteen and put it in their cabin. As a payback, the counselors bought a chain and padlock and put on it so they couldn’t get to their stuff inside. The only problem was, some of the campers aren’t as creative and don’t really think their pranks through. We had a girl write on the walls of the girl’s showers with nail polish. She had to clean it up. I won’t even mention what some of the younger boys did in the boys bathhouse (it was disgusting).

We also had some lame pranks like duck taping the toilet sets closed with only a few pieces of duct tape or running underwear up the flag pole. Some girls tried shave creaming the girls showers (oh, give me a break!) and a few thought it would be funny to shoe polish everyone’s cars. I can’t say it was funny – it was lame and now my car needs to be washed because whatever they used to clean it off (yep, they got caught), left a really bad film on my windows.

Thursday night/Friday morning was probably when some would say it hit the fan. My cabin was primarily senior girls. They had been wanting to do something really good all week and Fran & I kept telling them to wait till Wednesday or Thursday so that the senior boys wouldn’t have time to come up with a retaliation plan. At first, we had something really good planned for them to do. Some male counselors were going to steal the refrigerator in the boys cabin and put it out on the floating dock. Then we were going to get posed pictures of the senior girls with the refrigerator to make it look like they stole it. Problem was, they male counselors could never get into their cabin on Thursday night to get the fridge b/c there was always someone in there. So I had to break the bad news to the girls. But because it was their last year, we gave them some water balloons and gave them permission to go play some harmless pranks. It was funny because they were all dressed in black and set to go, but they kept standing at our cabin door too afraid to leave because the nigh patrol was standing outside. Fran finally told them to go do what they were going to do and hurry up BECAUSE they had to be back in the cabin by 2:30 a.m. or we were going to lock them out. Actually, we would have let them back in, but we wanted them back for a really good reason (I’ll get to that later). In addition to the water balloons, they had plans to go do something in the boys bathhouse. I really thought they might be crossing the line by going to the boys bathhouse and warned them against it, but in all honesty – this group really wasn’t that slick and I didn’t think they would even make it over there without being caught. Yeah, I was wrong – well sort of, they made it over there, but the male counselors knew they were there and went behind them and cleaned up everything they did.

Though technically, our girls didn’t do anything that would get them in serious trouble, the problem came when they weren’t back by 2:30 a.m. Four of them were because they never left the girls bathhouse, but rest did not heed our warning. See, we knew that the boys were up to something and planned on executing their plan sometime after 3 a.m. Their plan was to set off some fire crackers and bird bombs. If you are unfamiliar with a bird bomb, they use them in down town areas with a serious bird problem to attempt to scare them away. It sounds like a really loud gun shot and can be heard for at least a mile away. We tried to talk them out of it because I knew it would NOT go over well, but they didn’t listen. At 5 a.m., we heard three loud rifle like sounds followed by some fire works which I guess it had girls screaming and crying all over the place. At 5:30, the director came knocking on our cabin door to see if all our girls were in the cabin – they weren’t. Just then they came walking down the hill. They had been sitting up on the picnic tables most of the night. What was funny was when he asked them for their names and one of my co-counselors daughters (who is only 14, but went with them), says in her proudest cheerleader type voice “Kelcy ____!” She was so proud that she got caught and the rest of us had to laugh b/c she is Frannie’s daughter!

We did have to clear up the fact that our girls were not involved in the bird bomb issue and I had to clear up with a dad that his daughter never left the girl’s bathhouse (though, he was still mad that we gave them permission to be out after curfew), but other than that, it all blew over pretty quickly. Hopefully the ones that are mad will cool off by next year.

Over all, it was a good year. Might be worth returning next year.