summer camp
I don't have kids on my own yet, so here we go with some fun stories while looking after other's.

I've been involved in youth activities from my local church since wee age, but to defend myself, i've never been one of the god botherers, it had some sort of youth-centre function - meeting your friends,having a good time and even learn something some time. Like a scouts group, if you want something to compare, but without the sleeping in tents, making fire with your fingernails thing. I've went there as a child and as I grew older I changed sides an became a counsellor and looked after a group of children myself. (Great training for leading skills: If you can handle 8 ten-year-olds - a whole IT-department bwahaha) The highlight of the year has always been the two week summer camp, from which many legend stories have derived. Off went a group of 30 7-14 year olds guarded by a hand full of 17-25 year olds and as it's been from the church, the priest also went with us, being the only "real grown-up" to some youth hostel in the austrian mountains for two weeks of hiking, swimming,etc.

It's always been like a sport for the kids to wander around at night without getting caught or doing other nonsense and us on the other side to lurk in a dark corner to catch them redhanded and send them back to bed. Especially as puberty hit hard, the boys fancied to visit the girl's rooms for a game of spin the bottle, truth or dare or something equally thrilling in the wee hours. So we conspired with the girls from one room to invite the boys for the night while we would hide somewhere in the room to jump out with the good old BOOOO! unexpected. It went better than any of us could have imagined: I sat in the closet with perfect view around the room, while a fellow counsellor laid under the bed of one of the girls. Boys came, they chatted merrily away the usual teenage stuff, quite hard for us not to give up our hidings with stifled laughter while listening. One of the boys sat on the bed under which my fellow was lying, with his feet dangling from the edge - the perfect chance. My fellow jumped forward from under the bed, grabbed his ankles and tried to pull him under the bed. The boy, thinking the proverbial monster from under the bed had him, shrieked like a banshee, took one of his slippers to hit the "monster" and after I fell laughing out of my hideout and turned the light on, was white as a blanket. Minimum amounts of weewee my be involved by all participants, what a laugh.

The second story also involves scaring the crap out of the kids (I may add, that other fun activies also happened, besides our sadistic streaks...). Highlight activity on summercamp was having a bonfire till late in the night with barbecue, classical bonfire-and-guitar hits howled altogether and when as the fire went out we packed up and went for the "night-trek" to some place in the woods which had carefully searched for in the days before. Usually someone telling the scary-stories and some people hiding in the bushes for strange noises, etc. You could always pick those pissing themselves the most with fear (usually boys) as they where boasting how the weren't afraid. One year we decided to add a little variation for new thrills as many of the kids were with us the years before. As we went through the dark forest, one by one the counsellors "disappeared" silently into bushes beside the path, before the kids could notice. When suddenly one pipes up, that they are alone. We where standing a few meters besides them and nearly pissing ourselves laughing, I swear, I could have touched some of them, if I've reached out of the bush. They fully believed, we abandoned them in the woods at midnight. Some righteous panicked, one even threw up by fear, but then happened what I'm still proud of today. The elder kids, which were also some of my group, took the little ones, made them pair up and march home, full crisis management. Maybe I've really learned them some values and behaviour paired with common sense.
It didn't stop us from running the other way around the hill where the forest was situated to jump out of the bushes to give them another shock.

For a length of two weeks which always went over far too fast a quite impressive post, but I don't regret any of those years.
(threeverse ultima ratio regum, Thu 24 Apr 2008, 11:14, Reply)