The Rest of My Cabin

Once we finished that little adventure at the ropes course, and had Mike safely on the ground, we headed off to Frontier for dinner.  That event took place without any major issues arising, and we prepared to split up with the staff going to PPAIN groups and the campers going to the carnival at the basketball courts.  I was a bit apprehensive about leaving Brandon in a “loosely supervised” environment, but was instructed to not worry about it.

My group exercised their option to go off camp that evening, so we headed to Arby’s to eat a much needed second dinner, since I was still catching up from so many missed meals earlier that week.  I don’t recall discussing the situation in too much detail, even though that is theoretically the ideal place to do so.  I just didn’t even want to think about it for a while.

When we returned, everything seemed to have gone fine while I was away, and I collected my campers and herded them down to the gazebo for the Thursday night ceremony.  Brandon was not very cooperative or enthusiastic about having to “sit through this whole thing” but he didn’t do anything too inappropriate.  He totally tuned out Kevin’s message, preferring instead to lie back in the grass and cover his face with his hat.  Following an incident in Week 3, my internal policy on that type of thing was something like: “as long as they are not actively causing a distraction to those around them, let God take care of making sure they pay attention.”

When that was finished, Mouth came up and asked if I could take Brandon with the rest of my cabin for Illuminaria, s he could go to coffee house.  It was a short week, so the usual activities for both Thursday and Friday evenings were condensed into one much later Thursday night.  I reluctantly agreed, and told him where I was planning on taking them, in case there were any problems.  I retrieved our candle and we headed up the hill to the Wild Oak horse arena.  Once we got there, we all sat in a circle, and I lit the candle, so we had our miniature campfire.

We proceeded in the usual fashion, but with Brandon continually distracting the others, and rarely bringing up anything remotely positive.  The other guys in the cabin became very frustrated by his constant interruptions, and even openly called him on it, but their complaints as well as my instruction, had less impact on his behavior than I would have liked.  I had very few real options available to me at the time, besides patience.

At one point we were suddenly able to hear girls’ voices carrying from down the hill that seemed very close.  Common sense told me that there was no reason anyone would even be on our side of the canal, but they did sound extremely close.  Brandon suddenly decided that we was going to go see where they were, so he jumped up and started off across the field.  There I was, alone at the top of the hill, responsible for supervising two diverging groups of individuals.  This was definitely a time to be drawing one of those lines.

“Brandon, get back here, we are doing something.  Do you know how far away they probably are?  You aren’t supposed to be bothering them anyway.”  But he continued to disappear into the darkness.  Now I trusted the rest of my kids, so I knew Brandon was the one I couldn’t let out of my sight.  He had tried to run away once before.  I told them to sit tight and continue the discussion, and I jumped up to follow Brandon.  He stopped as he reached the edge of the clearing, where the weeds got thicker, probably realizing it would be difficult to go anywhere without a flashlight.  Also it was becoming obvious that the girls were nowhere nearby.  I checked the next day and discovered that the nearest group was below the pool, at least a quarter mile away.  I had covered about half the distance to Brandon when he paused, turned, and began to head back.  With a silent sigh of relief, I returned to continue the discussion with the cabin.

Once we had finished discussing each of them, they decided they wanted to talk about me as well, as is frequently the case.  The decided to have Brandon go first, “So that we can end on a positive note!”  Like I said before, they were very aware of what he was doing, and were not afraid to point it out to him.  Since Brandon didn’t take correction very well, it made little improvement.

Brandon started off with a nice calm statement, “Well BullsEye, you can be a real Jack*** sometimes.”

Immediately everyone else in the cabin was on there feet crowding around him shouting, “You can’t say that to BullsEye!”  “Take that back!”  “Why are you always such a jerk?”

“ENOUGH!  Sit down!”  I called them off.  “Thank you, but I can handle this.  Now Brandon, if you think you can refrain from inappropriate remarks, you may proceed.”

He wasn’t really capable of doing so, but I let him go on anyways, just to get it over with.  I think that after a bit more outrage from other member of my cabin, they worked him down to: “Well BullsEye, 95% of the time you are cool, but the other…”  I don’t recall him having any specifically positive comments, as was his style.

Anyhow, I eventually cut him off, and we proceeded around the circle.  The following part, listening to the rest of my cabin, was definitely the most impactful Illuminaria discussion of my summer.  I began to realize how much of a positive impact I had made on these kids, but also how much of a negative impact Brandon had been having on them.  The patience that I showed in dealing with Brandon had earned me a lot of respect from my other campers, as well as the ropes course adventures with Mike.  This was a little too much positive talk for Brandon, who eventually turned his back on the group.  I considered this an improvement from his constant harassment and interruptions, so I left him alone while wee finished.

Always Have a Backup Plan

With Mike starting to lose it, while sixty feet up, it was time for that backup plan.  So I called for Ryan to hurry up and finish rappelling down, and I had Rocky come over to relieve me on the belay once he had finished unclipping Garrett.  I was putting a helmet on and taking my gloves off as I crossed the bridge, and was ready to go by the time Ryan hit the ground.  I unclipped the carabineer directly from him to me, and went through the regular commands with Joy quite rapidly.  I must have set a new speed record for the combined Leap-MVP element, taking whatever route seemed quickest.  I had to slow down a few times, to give Joy a chance to take in the slack, but she did a great job of trying to keep up with me.  I figure the entire process took about one minute, and when I reached Mike, he hadn’t moved an inch.  I was right up there on the platform with him and he was sort of crying, but hadn’t totally lost his composure.  I talked to him pretty much constantly, and after a few minutes was able to get him to stand up and turn around.  I was right there behind him, as we inched towards the edge of the platform.  Things were beginning to look good until he got about six inches from the edge.

At that point he regressed to the frantic point at which I had reached him.  At any time from this point forward, I could easily have given him a little ‘boost’ and it all would have been over immediately, but I didn’t want to totally traumatize the kid for life.  No, I was just trying to traumatize him a little bit for the week.  He was half-way crying, and mumbling about freak accidents and how the belay rope was going to break.  It was at this point that I had him sit down on the end of the platform.  For some reason I was thinking at the time that this would help in some way.  I don’t recall exactly what my thought process was, but it definitely didn’t work out the way I was anticipating.  Quick tip of the day: Never ever let someone sit down on the Leap of Faith, ever.  You will have great difficulty getting them to move again.  He had his feet over the edge and everything, but had a death grip on the platform with his fists at his sides.  At this point the tension from the weight of eighty feet of belay rope leading down to Rocky was beginning to pull pretty strongly on the kid, which was freaking him out even more.  So I grabbed his belay rope with my right hand, to give him some slack and reached behind me to grab the platform to keep from being pulled off myself.  I had to hold this position until we finally got him off, and I would estimate there was about fifty pounds of tension on the rope.  That would have been enough to pull Mike over the edge if I had let go, but not enough to make sure he cleared the platform totally if he was resisting.

It was right about then that Mouth returned from getting the pickup truck, and had brought Hong along to help load up the ropes course gear.  We had been up there for about ten minutes by that point, so we weren’t setting any records, but things weren’t exactly going smoothly.  Mouth and Hong both talked to him for awhile.  Hong had been the one to help Mike two days earlier on the Ladder jump, and helped him on the paintball field as well, so he was a familiar face.  They had a nice little chat, and over the course of the discussion, our creative adventure on the Ladder jump was revealed to Mouth in a rather humorous way.

It was right about then that Indy and Buffalo showed up.  Now I was beginning to feel a little bad for occupying one of the MVP belay lines for my little adventure, as well as both of their belayers.  My campers below were beginning to get worried about the fact that Canteen closed at 5pm, which was probably rapidly approaching.  Buffalo was generous enough to actually hike up the hill to collect my kids’ candy for them, so they wouldn’t totally miss out on that.  While all that was being sorted out, we were still trying to calm Mike down and get him to voluntarily go for it.  I made a few subtle attempts to get Rocky to tighten the belay line, so that we could sling shot him off if I let go.  My attempts at silent communication were futile, and it was not like I was going to yell down to him, “Give it a nice hard yank to rip him off the platform!”  All trust would be lost, plus I still had in mind that I could turn this into a positive experience for the kid if I ended it in the right context.

Brandon actually managed to behave himself reasonably well throughout this process, with only a minimal level of morbid comments about impending death.  The rest of my cabin was kept fully entertained be the events progressing at the top of the tree.  At some point Mouth yelled up, “Hey Mike!”

We both looked down and simultaneously replied, “Yeah?”  Only one of my rather attentive campers picked up on that.  Nathan was the only one to discover my real name before I revealed it at the end of the week.

So we continued to talk with Mike and move the situation forward.  Eventually Buffalo returned with my kids’ snacks, and I was beginning to stress over how late it seemed.  Dinner was supposed to be at 5:30, and here I was holding up half the staff in this little adventure, after having deliberately gambled on requiring their assistance in this endeavor if it went south, which it clearly had.  I could have ended it at any moment, but I wanted to find a way to bring about a positive outcome for Mike, since that was the whole point, but every time we discussed anything about jumping or falling, he started to freak out again. 

Then out of the blue, Canary appeared below me with her cabin in tow, headed over the Swing-to for a little low ropes action.  I was a bit confused, but then quite relieved once I thought about it, since that meant that it was not nearly as late as I had previously thought.  That lowered my stress level quite a bit, and allowed me to relax about how long this was taking.  After a few more minutes of ‘negotiating’ we got Mike to accept the idea of coming down, regardless of how much he didn’t like it.  Mouth and Hong counted down from five, Rocky applied a lot more tension to the rope, and I gave him a little shove, and there he went.  We had a nice ear piercing “AHHHH!” to break the serene forest noise as he swung back and forth while Rocky slowly lowered him to the ground.  I immediately scrambled back over to the center of the MVP, and rappelled down, almost beating Mike to the ground, courtesy of a good bit of help from Joy on the belay.  Mike was clearly shaken up, and at this point I wasn’t sure how I felt about the entire situation.  It had been a gamble from the beginning, but had I won or lost, and at what cost?  As it turned out, it not even 5pm by the time we were back on the ground, so Buffalo and Indy still had time to go up the MVP, my kids had gotten their Canteen snacks, and no one had gotten hurt or anything.  So I had lost nothing, but what effect had it all had on Mike?  He was very emotionally shaken up when he reached the ground, but within ten minutes or fifteen minutes, he seemed to have recovered.  By the end of the day he was ready to try it again, but that was obviously not to be, based on the schedule, and that I only have so much freedom at camp to manipulate the system and plan.

Taking it Right to the Edge

Thursday morning was fairly uneventful.  At staff meeting, Rocky explained the arrangement they had setup for Brandon, so at least everyone else was back on the same page, to a degree.  Breakfast and gazebo went as usual.  Brandon graced us with his presence during our cabin huddle, and managed to limit his distracting comments and negative remarks to one single continuous stream.  The total loss of that whole scheduled time every morning for any direct teaching was only one of the wonderful contributions that Brandon generously made to the rest of the members of the cabin. I am sure they learned things, but those things were more related to life lessons about patience than anything from Bible readings.

Mouth joined us for Paintball during our morning activity period, and we ended up using him for target practice, since Paladin had setup specific exercises to run through for Mega-week.  Then we divided into groups for a while and switched off instructors on different courses.  When we reconvened at the end, I looked over at Mouth and asked, “So, where’s Brandon?”  There was a nice silence as we looked around, and couldn’t see him.  It turned out that Paladin had sent a couple campers down to the command post, but I never really understood the full story as to why.  We found him down there and everything was fine, but it’s humorous that between the two of us he still managed to disappear during the first activity period under the new plan.

We had lunch, and headed off to the ropes course for the last time that week, and most of my guys still had yet to even attempt the MVP.  I assumed that Mouth would want to do the MVP with Brandon, since he was sort of ‘his’ counselor, but I was kind of okay with that.  I am always looking for any legitimate excuse to climb things on the ropes course, but the idea of being alone in close proximity with an unstable individual, in what could be a very stressful environment for him, was not particularly appealing to me.

We were able to get everyone who wanted to go, a chance to go up the MVP.  Once everyone else had gone, I asked Mouth if he wanted to go up with Brandon.  He declined, but suggested that I should go up with Brandon instead.  I was hesitant, but I really never could turn down a chance to go up the MVP.  For once in my life, I was NOT tempted to try it blindfolded.  I discussed a couple of loose contingency plans with Joy and Maggie, who would be belaying.  I wanted to make sure that we were taking full advantage of the fact that the belayer has a significant level of control during a climb.

After getting clipped in and looking up at the element, I turned to Brandon and reached out my hand.  He shook it, and I said something like “All the way to top.”  And with that we were off.  As we climbed up, and the general pattern was that I would assist Brandon up the next obstacle and then he would try to push forward, totally ignoring me behind him.  Luckily I am well capable of climbing without his assistance, but it was humorous how blatant his lack of consideration and teamwork was.  I felt no need to call him on it, especially since I was doing fine without his help.  We make it all the way to the top in less than 10 minutes, so we did well in that regard.  He didn’t seem too bothered by being high up, but I never gave him time to think about it anyway.  Once we were standing on top of the tire, we shook hands again.  “Good job, welcome to the top.”

He rappelled down first, and I unhooked the caterpillar rope on my way down, but still made it to the ground fairly quickly.  Maggie was still unhooking him as I touched down, and it was right about then that I heard Brandon’s first positive statement of the week.  Maggie was giving him some type of congratulating encouragement, “Nice job, you guys got up there pretty fast.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t have made it all the way to the top without BullsEye’s help.”

He didn’t say it to me, but he obviously knew I could hear him.  It was a start I guess.

Once that was done, we let a few people take a second attempt, until the activity period was over.  At that point, Maggie took the two girls up to canteen, to rendezvous with the rest of their cabin, and I kept my cabin at the ropes course to give a couple of my guys a bit more practice.  Mouth stuck around, but he was keeping busy tearing down the other elements for the day.  Rocky showed up, since he and Joy had agreed to belay the MVP, for Indy and Buffalo, who wanted to attempt it on their time off that afternoon.  While they were waiting, they were sending a few of my kids up the MVP and Leap, and I took Mike and James over to the Catwalk.  Over the next half hour or so I sent them both up repeatedly, and got Mike to a point where he would lean off or jump off, and was getting more comfortable.  At that point the only other elements setup, were the Leap and the MVP.  I saw an opportunity, and began to formulate a plan, which took advantage of the fact that we had so many staff members available.  Mike had mastered the Catwalk, and I wanted to push him farther, but I was well aware that I was running the risk that he would freak out if we raised the height.  But I also had a backup plan that to deal with the problem if that situation arose.  I am a big believer in pushing people to their limit, so I decided to give it a shot.  I brought Mike over to the Leap of Faith, and harnessed him up.  I made sure I had a harness on as well.  Two of my campers, Ryan and Garrett were almost to the top of the MVP, belayed by Rocky and Joy, as I hooked Mike in.  He was a bit apprehensive, but like I said before, he had an amazingly good attitude about these things.

“I don’t know about this.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you will do great. I’ve got you, all the way,” I told him as I picked him up by the belay rope, to test it.

With that, I headed over to the belay post, we said our commands, and he started climbing.  He did great all the way to the hook, and then a little past that, he paused.  Garrett had made it to the top of the MVP, and was rappelling down, right about then.  I had Rocky let him stop, and Garrett swung onto the bridge, and climbed over next to Mike.  Garrett proceeded to do a great job of talking Mike up the next twenty feet or so, staying parallel with him by climbing up the log ladder on the MVP side of the tree.  Once Mike made the curve away from there, Garrett finished belaying back to the ground, and Ryan started down.  Mike had made it up very close to the top by then, since the staples are well positioned in that section, but he was having trouble getting up onto the platform.  Ryan stopped at the cable that the rope swing hangs from, and talked Mike the rest of the way onto the platform.  Mike had been doing great all the way up.  He had slowed down at points, but with a little well planned encouragement, he hadn’t stopped anywhere for long.  I figure that he made it to the top in about ten minutes.  As soon as he swung his leg over, and straddled the platform, facing the tree, that all changed.  I guess he figured he was safe temporarily, and dropped his guard, emotionally.  All of a sudden, I could tell that he had totally freaked out.  He totally froze, and Ryan was trying to calm him down from his position over on the MVP.  I could see that Mike was really freaking out, and I knew from the experience a few days earlier, that it was only going to get worse.

The Theoretical Hand-Off

I sat down with my cabin at a table in the shade, and we just sat there eating and talking.  I fielded a few questions about what had happened, and our response.  “No, Brandon hadn’t been given an ‘O,’ at least not yet.  Yes, you should be careful around him.  No, you shouldn’t totally avoid him.”  Although I was aware of it intellectually, it was hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that my campers had no idea what had happened on Monday, and this was the first time I heard it referred to as the ‘water bottle’ incident, since all they had seen of it, was when Brandon threw his water bottle and stomped off to the cabin.  But I didn’t give them any idea that anything else had happened.  It was also at this point that they told me that THEY had seen his blade.  It was interesting to begin to understand their perspective on the situation, and I was just starting to understand the effect that Brandon was having on my cabin as a whole.  They were by far my ‘best’ cabin, in that they got along and behaved themselves, especially since I was not always around to supervise them.  I am fairly sure that was not by accident or random.  It is likely that the experience of having to deal with Brandon in their cabin united them in a way, they had a common problem which connected them, and working well together was the best way to deal with it.  But that is just a theory, every set of kids is different, and the situation they are in varies every week.

Eventually Mouth took a break from his conversation with Brandon, pull me aside for a chat.  He had a lot more sympathy for Brandon’s situation than I did, that is for sure.  I am sure there were many reasons for that, since Mouth hadn’t actually seen any of Brandon’s misbehavior, and I guess he could relate to him in some way.  I am someone who highly values rules and order, so I really couldn’t.  Plus I was the one that most of his anger was usually directed towards, as the most visible authority figure.  Mouth wanted to talk with him some more, but it was dinner time, so I needed to take my cabin down to Frontier, and then theoretically I was scheduled to have a few hours off that evening, since it was Wednesday.  I gave Mouth the two minute rundown on everything I could think of, possible possession of a blade, etc.  Mouth took Brandon with him, to chat while he supervised ropes course teardown, and promised to take care of things from there, while I was gone.

So I took my kids down the hill to Frontier and got them lined up.  I was squaring away dinner plans with Indy when Rocky showed up.  I explained as much as possible about what had happened, and then he sent me to take my scheduled time off, telling me that he would take care of things while I was gone.  Indy and I set off for Mongolian BBQ.  It was pretty therapeutic to have a solid half hour to explain/vent about the situation during our drive into Auburn.  By the time we got there, we had recruited quite a crowd, so we had a good time during the meal, and the conversation centered on other things.  I still have the message from my fortune cookie that night, only two words: “Don’t Panic.”

So with that we headed back, and I was honestly hoping to arrive to a situation that involved one less camper for the rest of the week.  Rocky was at the staff parking lot when I arrived, and gave me a ride back to Wild Oak.  He explained that Brandon was not being sent home, but that he was supposed to be primarily under Mouth’s supervision.  He would sleep in the Pinto cabin, which was empty that week, under the watchful eye of both Mouth and Paladin.  Once again, I point out that no one realized Paladin had not been told most of the story, but because of the partial flow of information, he wasn’t even aware that there was more that he didn’t know.  I see that as one of the most ironic parts of the story, especially since I worked so closely with Paladin in every other regard that week.

Rocky’s perspective on the situation was that Mouth would supervise Brandon, but that they would usually hang out with my cabin during the day, since that was sort of Brandon’s social group.  I think Mouth’s perception was that he was to supervise Brandon when I was unavailable, for assigned activities, sleeping and a few other times.  What actually happened is that I ended up supervising Brandon solo at meals, gazebo times, cabin huddles, and a few other select times.  Mouth did go to scheduled activities with him, slept in Pinto, took him during Friday cabin huddle at my request, and gave him a good talking to at other times if he was starting to get out of line.

The first thing that happened when I got back up to Wild Oak, was that Mouth asked me to supervise Brandon during Mission Impossible that night. Mouth wanted some time off, and he figured I could pair up with Brandon, either as spotters or as campers, so that Brandon would not be out in the woods unattended.  I didn’t want to be a spotter with him, sitting in the dark alone for an hour with nothing to do, so I agreed to play on the camper side, with him as my partner.

I hadn’t really decided how I wanted to handle the situation by the time the game began.  We started of by heading down to the paintball command post, but after realizing how futile it was to push forward from there, we retreated and headed way farther up the hill.  I started in the lead, because I knew the area better, but after about twenty feet, I stopped and put him in the front, for a number of reasons.  I didn’t like having my back to him, alone in the dark, at best he might try to just slip away, at worst…well I just kept about four feet between us.  I was also very conscious of the fact that no one had told me of any resolution to the blade situation.  Anyhow, we slipped in across the top of Arizona, and down the back side of Eagle’s Point over the course of the next hour.  We were still about fifty feet away from the objective when the game ended, and as a bonus I was still alive.

Upon our return to the cabins, I handed Brandon over to Mouth for the night, and got the rest of my guys ready for bed.  And then I got some real sleep for the first time in quite a while.

Heading up the Hill

At this point, after throwing him on the ground, I was fully expecting Brandon to jump on Alan and start to destroy him.  I was only a half second behind him, but that would lead to a series of events that I did not want to see take place.  No matter what happened, the results would be bad.  Luckily for everyone involved, Brandon just stopped and stood there, starring at everyone, who were all staring at him.  There was a very tense silence for a moment, until I took charge.

“Brandon, don’t even move.  Slip, take your cabin up to Canteen.  Girls, head up to Canteen with Autumn.  My guys, follow Slip’s cabin.  NOW!”  So they all headed off, leaving me alone with Brandon.  “Alright, I am going to give you a few minutes to cool off, and think about what you just did.  Don’t go anywhere.”  With that I headed a few yards a way to watch Impact doing the MVP, to give him some time and space.  I kept an eye on him and was trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation.  It would probably be best to avoid Impact by taking him down the zip line path-.

“That little b***h stole my hat,” Brandon suddenly shouted, interrupting my train of thought.

“Relax!  I highly doubt that.  Look around for it.”

This was followed few moments later by a not so loud and intimidating “..ah yeah, it was in my pocket.”

“Alright, are you ready to go?  Let’s head out this way.”  I pointed towards the zipline.

“Heck no, I am going the exact same way that he did.”  Presumably he was talking about Alan.

“Hey hello?  This way.”  But there was no changing his mind.  He set off towards the bridge, and pushed his way through the Impact campers there to get to the other side.  As we left the ropes course, Mouth and MC-5 had just finished taking down the zip line and were in sight just down the road.  I jumped up and down waving to get there attention, which worked.  They hopped into the Mazda and drove over to try to cut Brandon off at the T-intersection as he started to head up the hill.  Mouth yelled out at him, “Is BullsEye trying to get you to stop?”

“No, its fine!” I interrupted.  “But we could use your assistance.  Just meet us at Canteen.”

So they headed off, and Brandon and I continued to walk up the hill, I was not too far behind him, a bit off to the side.

About half way up, he had calmed down and he began to speak, “So I assume my parents have been called?”

“Well that may not have happened quite yet, but I expect it will in the not too distant future.  You really need to start thinking before you act. Things that you do have consequences, many of them are totally natural.  That incident was very public, so this time everyone is going to know what happened.  Everything happening now could easily have been avoided if you hadn’t acted totally on impulse down there.”

When we reached the top, MC-5 had disappeared and Mouth was standing by the truck.  I wanted to have a word with him in private before we dealt with the situation, but there was no way I was going to leave Brandon unattended with Alan and a hundred other campers ten yards away, eating at the Canteen.  I remember having great difficulty deciding how to explain the situation to Mouth as we approached him.  I didn’t want it to seem like I was “telling on” him, because I wanted to maintain a level of free-standing authority with Brandon.  Also, telling Mouth about the blade issue in private is like a heads up, while doing it right in front of Brandon would be more like an accusation.  It also seemed important for it to appear to Brandon that my reaction was more than just one of reporting things up the line, since he usually would have to deal with me first in any situation.

I think Mouth spoke first, since I was still choosing my words. “So, what has been going on?  Has he been giving you trouble?”

“I guess you could say that” I replied, and then to Brandon, “Alright listen, you can’t go around picking a fight, shoving someone around.  You know that.  That is not how we operate here.  That is NOT okay.”

“So he was pushing someone around?  Did anybody actually see it happen?”

“Oh yeah, like fifty people.”

Mouth turned to Brandon, “So you want to talk about it?  Let’s go over here and sit down.”

They took a seat at the bench, and I waited around for a minute, long enough to figure out that Brandon was trying to spin it that he had hardly touched Alan.  I also could tell from the way that Mouth was steering the conversation that it was unlikely that Brandon would be sent home over this.  That left me with a whole list of things to do for damage control.

The first thing I did, was check on the rest of my cabin, to make sure that they had gotten there candy and canteen stuff squared away.  Slip had taken care of that, and they were fine, so I pulled went over to have a quick chat with Alan.

“So are you okay?”

“Yeah, I will be fine.”

“Well things like that shouldn’t happen here at camp, but Brandon is not the most predictable person in the world.  I can’t really explain to you why he is here, but just try to be careful around him.  It would be wise to avoid doing things that would aggravate him, if you know what I mean.”

With that, he headed back to his cabin mates.  Next I pulled Nicole aside.  I never really figured out how much she really knew about what was going on, but she definitely played clueless, so I played along.

“That was really weird, what happened down there.”

“Yes it was.  We try to avoid having things like that happen here.”

“Earlier in the week Brandon was always by himself, so I went and talked with him a few times.  But now he is kind of scary.”

“Brandon is not the most stabile person in the world, so you need to be careful around him.”  I was trying to figure out how to balance trust and respect, and a few other things.  What might be good for one camper might be bad for the other.  For example any time Brandon spent around normal people would probably benefit him, but time spent around Brandon might be having a bad influence on those other people.  I try to remain a bit neutral in that regard, and let things progress naturally.

At that point, MC-5 appeared, so I sent Nicole back to Autumn, and began to explain what had happened to MC-5.  I filled him in on the details he was missing from the Monday incident, and the things that had happened since.  I explained to him what had happened with Alan, and about the issue of Brandon having a blade.  I just wanted to make sure there was someone on leadership who knew the most recent details, in case I didn’t get a chance to talk to Mouth in private.  MC-5 assured me that he would make sure the information was passed on to the appropriate people, and I went back to deal with my cabin, so that they would have a counselor, sort of, at least for a little while.

The Highs and the Lows

There was no staff meeting, as was the custom for Wednesday mornings.  So once again, there was no unified communication among the staff about the status of the situation with Brandon.  As part of the Super Wednesday activities, I arranged with Autumn and Slip to combine our cabins to complete low ropes elements together.  I deliberately made sure that Brandon was not in the same group as Katie, in an attempt to minimize the distraction level, but this placed him in the group with Nicole, the other female sportsman camper.  That is the group that Autumn and I took up to my favorite low ropes element, the Triple-T.  Much of that event relates to the buildup of ideas, and since Nicole had done it a few weeks earlier, I limited her participation for the first half hour or so, so that the rest of the group would have the opportunity to make some of these discoveries on their own.  Brandon was not much of a team player through all of this, and only participated at my direct request.  He repeatedly asked to go get a drink of water from down at the picnic tables, which I repeatedly refused, for a variety of reasons.  After fifteen minutes of this, I could tell that I was reaching the limit of his patience, so finally let him go.  Within a few seconds of him heading down the hill, Autumn insisted that she should follow him, against my recommendation.  I continued to facilitate the event while she disappeared after him.

She was gone for a good ten minutes, and when she returned, she pulled me aside.  “By the way, do you know he has a knife?”

“WHAT?”  That one caught me a bit more by surprise.

“Well, like a razor blade, or a knife, or something.  He has been scraping his wrists with it.”

“I saw the marks, but I didn’t realize they were that fresh,” I replied, while also remembering the heart carved into his arm, which had been a point of discussion on Monday night.  I should have known he would have something like that.  And to think that I had stripped all six knives out of my luggage and put them in the kitchen on Monday night, just so there would be no weapons of any sort accessible to him.  Also, I am usually really good at identifying when a camper has something they shouldn’t, with shells from the 22 range being my favorite thing to confiscate.

Brandon returned a few minutes later, without mentioning anything that had happened down at the picnic tables, and we continued the event.  At different times Brandon and a few others got into very heated debates about how to best complete the event, but he was not necessarily the instigator, and I thought it was good that he engaged with the group.  Eventually we finished and traded groups with Slip.  That part of the afternoon went without incident, although if I recall correctly, Brandon refused to participate on the Swing-To.  Once we had finished with the second group at the Triple-T, we regrouped and moved on to the high ropes elements.

Slip ran the Flying Squirrel, while Ashley belayed the Multi-line, and I was on the Catwalk.  This worked out well since I wanted to get my kids who had experienced difficulty on the Multi-line the day before, a chance to practice on a lower element.  I ran most everyone through once, and sent James and Mike up three or four times each over the next hour.  Brandon was only willing to do it if I let him go without a harness and belay rope.  I was learning in dealing with Brandon, that drawing a line and telling him to stay behind it would usually result in him immediately reaching over and tapping the other side, just to have crossed the line.  If on the other hand, I just pointed him in a given direction, after delaying just long enough to establish some level of control, he would usually do whatever I requested.  This was on of those few times were I clearly had to draw the line. I of course refused his request to go without a harness, and clearly told him not to climb anything without the proper safety and supervision.  After that, he behaved himself reasonably well, still occasionally offering those insightful comments about how thin the rope was to help boost the confidence of kids when they needed it the most, but I was able to put a damper on that as well.

All three cabins were intermingling at this point so he headed off to observe the other two events, while I dealt with belaying the Catwalk.  I had Mike Holmes up again, who was having some trouble, when Slip approached.

“BullsEye, I need to talk with you.”

“Alright, I am a little busy, what is it?”

He came closer, “It is kind of a sensitive issue.”

So I sent the rest of my guys over to the bench by the Multi-line, but could do nothing about Mike who was done with the Catwalk, but refusing to rappel down.  Slip talked quietly while I watched Mike, waiting for him to lean back, so I could let him down.

“Yes…go ahead.”

“Well, Brandon likes Nicole, and-.”  That hit me like a lightning strike.  A hundred different little incidents over the course of the week immediately flashed through my mind.  I realized my assumption from campfire about Katie had been incorrect, and that my ‘solution’ at low ropes had actually put Brandon in the same group as Nicole, upping the emotional level of those earlier ‘debates.’

“One of my guys Alan does too.”  Slip continued. “Now the two of them are being really aggressive with one another.”

“Does Alan realize that Brandon could probably kill him?”

“Well I separated them for the time being, but I figured that would be important for you to keep an eye on that.”

“Okay thanks, I will.”

“Oh, and we are getting ready to head up to Canteen pretty soon, are you almost done?”

“As soon as he comes down,” I responded, pointing up at Mike, “But just send my guys over here, and you can head out, I will catch up later.”

Autumn and Slip’s cabins took their time getting ready to leave, taking off their harnesses etc.  I had gotten Mike down from the Catwalk using another fairly creative method that I will refrain from going into detail about in writing, and was collecting my cabin’s gear before they had even left.  My guys had all been sent up to the Catwalk near me, and the other two cabins were down at the picnic tables collecting their belongings.

Right as I was taking off my harness, Brandon walked over to me and said, “If you will excuse me for a moment, I have to go kick someone’s a**.”

This seemed like another one of those times where I needed to clearly draw the line for him.  “Absolutely not, get back here, right now!”  That had absolutely no effect, so I headed off down the hill after him.  At this point I was taking a different approach, “You might want to stop and think about the consequences of what you are doing.  It might save you a lot of trouble in the very near future.”  I wasn’t yelling at him.  I could tell that he was shaking in rage again, and totally out of control.  I was only about ten feet behind him, so I was talking in a low voice, trying to diffuse the situation, instead of making a scene.  Regardless of attempts to keep things low key, the group below saw us as we approached, and they all scattered to get out of his way.  All that is, except Alan, who froze, sitting there, rooted to the picnic table.  Brandon reached him, grabbed him around the shoulders, and threw him onto the ground a few feet away.

Working in my Element-On the Ropes Course

The activity of the morning was ropes course, and half of the staff headed down with them, since it was the first day all summer that we were running the MVP, as part of Mega-week.  I had the period off, but wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to do something constructive with Brandon, as well as see my cabin members do the MVP, so I went with them.  There were five staff members, so once the other four had the Leap and MVP up and running, I took Brandon and a few other kids to the other side of the ropes course to use another event.  The Multi-line belay was the only other event setup, for Junior Adventure to use for the ladder jump.  But they were nowhere to be seen, so I decided to commandeer it.  I had requested Brandon to join my group, but didn’t feel a need to force him to go first, so I took volunteers, and sent another one of my guys James up first instead.  I told Brandon to put on a harness because I wanted him to go second, which he actually agreed to do, without much resistance.  Unfortunately James freaked out by the time he reached the top of the ladder, and it took ten minutes for me to convince him to jump from there.  During this time Brandon had been offering helpful advice to James about ‘how to not think about how thin the rope was, and advising me to give the rope a quick jerk to yank him down.  I of course told him to be quiet, but didn’t push it too far, since being tied to the tree, I wasn’t currently in a position to back it up.  Eventually Brandon stated that he was sick of waiting for James to finish, and so he was going back over to the Leap and MVP.  I let him go, just to be rid of his commentary, which wasn’t helping the situation.  I got James down within a few minutes, and was disappointed that I had lost the opportunity to get something constructive accomplished with Brandon.  Another of my campers, Nathan, wanted to go, so I belayed him, and he completed the event in less than five minutes, as it should be.  At that point Hong showed up from the zip line where Junior Adventure was, and I told him I would get out of the way, since the event was scheduled for his group.  He was appreciative, and told me I should sent up one more kid while he and Sunshine got his group rounded up and brought over.

My next kid in line was Mike Holmes, the youngest kid in my cabin, and the first cabin member I have had with the same name as me.  He seemed fine on the ground, and climbed the ladder quickly with no problems, but once he reached the top of the ladder, he totally froze up.  Within a minute or two, Hong and Sunshine showed up with their group, but I had a kid stuck in the tree using the only rope available on that side of the course.  Sunshine took their group to do some of the low ropes elements while Hong helped me try to talk Mike out of the tree.  The situation only went down hill from there, with Mike totally bawling at the top of the ladder, and then of all things, it began to rain, fairly hard.  Eventually Squeaker came over to let me know that it was lunch time and the rest of the group was ready to leave.  And I am looking up thinking, “Oh, this went well, I came down here on my time off, to do something with Brandon which totally failed, and have managed to ruin the Junior Adventure ropes course event for the day, and I have a kid stuck in a tree in the rain, and now I am missing another meal.  I love it when that happens.”

It turns out, that while I was dealing with Mike on the top of the Multi-line ladder, Brandon had actually done the Leap of Faith, but I didn’t find that out until a couple days later.  Eventually using a method that should not be committed to paper, Hong and I were able to get Mike down from the tree, and we headed off to lunch at our respective camps.  Once Mike was back on the ground and had a few minutes to settle down, he was fine, and talking about how he was disappointed in how he had done, and wanted to try it again sometime to do better.  It was this attitude that made him my favorite camper of the summer before the end of the week.  So we walked back, and caught the tail end of lunch, before I headed back to the ropes course with the other activity group, and sent my cabin, including Brandon, off to the 22 range with Paladin.  My second activity period went much better, besides only getting 5 of the 10 guys to try the MVP, which always bothers me.  The last kid to head up didn’t have a partner, so I did the event with him, which is always fun, while Autumn and Crash belayed us.

We managed to survive the rest of the day without any major incidents, but things were not perfect.  We had an early campfire, with a talk led by Jesse, once again convincing Brandon that this selection was deliberately for his benefit.  He asked a couple of questions that were out of line, but Jesse handled it very well.  Throughout the event, Brandon and the girl sitting next to him, Katie, continued distract each other from what was going on in front, and seemed to be enjoying themselves together.  Remembering what Brandon had told me earlier about why he had stayed, I figured I knew which combination of people I would need to keep an eye on.

Once campfire was finished, we headed into another first for the summer, night paintball.  At my insistence, we had setup an alternate option at the campfire pit, for anyone who did not want to be out on the paintball field.  In the same way I didn’t want Brandon on the night hike if he didn’t want to be there, I knew we didn’t want anyone on the paintball field in the dark who didn’t want to be there, especially Brandon.  Once someone decided to sit out, the likelihood that there mask would come off at the wrong time was too great, and no one would be able to see the problem.  I also hadn’t decided until the last minute how I felt about letting Brandon play.  The idea of handing a mentally unstable teenager with violent tendencies a projectile launcher and setting him loose in the dark raised a few red flags in my mind.  We eventually decided to let him play and just tried to keep a close eye on him.  We really tried to keep a close eye on everyone that night, but that proved to be very difficult in the darkness.  The event actually went very well all things considered, and we had no safety violations, nor any problems from Brandon.  A few campers elected to exercise the opportunity to go elsewhere when they got tired of playing within a few rounds, which helped keep the chaos level down.  It was nearly eleven o’clock when we finished playing, and headed off to bed.  Mouth was once again stationed outside on the porch all night, and this time I actually got some sleep.  Brandon or no Brandon, I was pretty tired at this point, and plus, he had gone for like 12 hours without doing anything incredibly stupid.

Ready for Another Big Day

I got up at six-thirty to take a shower, and stepped over Mouth who was fast asleep on the porch.  I finished up and was headed into the kitchen just after seven, for our seven-fifteen staff meeting.  Rocky and Max showed up from the duplexes right on time, and we began the meeting.  When the subject of Brandon came up, I told everyone that I had had a lot of trouble with him, and that Kevin was coming up later in the morning, and that we were going to discuss with him what should be done.  Since I expected Brandon to be headed home, it didn’t seem necessary to go into detail about what happened, or how everyone else should deal with him.  As it turned out, Kevin did show up during breakfast, but to deal with something else, with Rocky, so they disappeared, and the Brandon issue went unresolved as we headed off to morning Gazebo.  Both Paladin and I were acutely aware that my cabin was assigned to go to the rifle range right after lunch.  I pointed out to Paladin that he shouldn’t need Kevin’s permission to deny Brandon access to a gun, if it came down to that.  Regardless, we of course wanted a decision like that to come from, and be communicated to Brandon, by someone higher up the chain of command.

Right as we were finishing the morning Bible sermon by the Canteen, Rocky finally showed up, with Kevin driving up a few moments later.  Rocky headed over to me, and explained to me that he and Kevin had decided that Brandon would be allowed to go to the 22 range, but would not be allowed to shoot, which seemed like a no-brainer.  Kevin was heading down to tell Brandon the same thing in person, right as the rest of the group was breaking up to head off to cabin huddles.  I could tell Brandon was beginning to get into a very angry rebellious state, and he started exhibiting some of the same behaviors he had shown the day before, when we had been having our ‘theological debate’ by the Canteen.  He refused to even turn around to look at Kevin, who had been approaching him from the rear of the group.  I was able to herd the other six guys in my cabin up into the archery range without them even noticing what was going on with Brandon.  So there I was, standing in the archery range shed, trying to teach my cabin about the Bible, while watching the stand off between Brandon and Kevin through the screen.  Needless to say it was a little distracting.  Kevin was standing about ten feet up the hill from him, obviously talking to him the entire time.  Rocky was standing a few feet away, seeing everything as well.  Jason’s cabin had begun to hold their Bible study at the table a few feet away, but within a few minutes, Rocky had directed them elsewhere, to give Kevin a little space.  Once it had gone on for a couple minutes, I figured that with the behavior being exemplified, and now that Rocky had seen the way the kid was, that they would deal with the situation, and I should no longer need to worry about it.

I moved a few feet to get out of sight, and began to focus on the task at had, the Tuesday morning Bible study.  A few minutes in, one of my campers pointed out that Brandon was missing, but I told him it was fine, I knew where he was.  We proceeded to have a discussion for the next half hour, until to my surprise, Brandon walked around the corner and sat down.

“Ahh…Welcome back”

“Yeah”

“Well, we were just reading James chapter two…” -And so the adventure continued.

When we finished and regrouped for activities, Rocky pulled me aside and told me the results of Brandon’s little talk.  He said that he and Kevin had prayed about it and they really wanted to keep him there because they thought it would be good for him.  They had told Brandon that he officially had a ‘G’ and if they heard anything but good things about him from me, he would be sent home.  Combining that with the events I had witnessed in the last hour, it seemed that we were putting up with a lot from him, and obviously tossing out the usual playbook of discipline for the sake of reaching him.

Yesterday was a Long Week

Mouth was on the porch talking with Rocky, who had arrived moments earlier.  I sent my kids to bed with the exception of Brandon who I sent to take a shower, conveniently giving me an opportunity to talk with Rocky about the situation.  Paladin had also waited around and was chomping at the bit to discuss the events of the evening with Rocky.  Rocky was not really expecting the importance of what we were planning to tell him.  “Its pretty late guys, can this wait until the morning?”  “NO!”  “Oh…okay”

“I will let Paladin go first, so that he can head off to bed.  We are going to need to have a much longer conversation after that.  Go ahead Paladin.”

“That kid Brandon deserves a Verbal, a ‘G’ and an ‘O’ and definitely should be sent home!  No question about it!”

“Okay, now that we know your opinions on the matter, you should probably head off to bed Paladin.  Thank you.”  I was actually thrilled by the way that went down, since I totally agreed that that needed to be said, and it would help put everything else that I had to say in the proper context.  As noted earlier, I did not realize that his recommendation was based entirely on the events of the night hike, since he was unaware of the earlier incident.  I on the other hand considered the night hike to be a minor issue by comparison, but still reason to send Brandon home.  He had been given a second chance, and had shown himself to be continuously disobedient and disrespectful towards the staff.

Once Paladin left, I did the best I could to explain to Rocky the events of that afternoon and evening, as best I could in about 5 minutes.  I had been planning that explanation ever since seeing him drive by, so I made sure I hit a few key points, but it was a much abbreviated version of the story.

“So that is the basic gist of what happened while you were gone.  We have to decide what to do about it in the morning, but I wanted to give you a heads up now, so that you have some time to think about it tonight.  Kevin is supposed to come up here in the morning.  My recommendation is going to be that I think it is a bad idea to let him stay here.  We gave him another chance, and he has clearly demonstrated that he won’t follow the rules.”

Rocky headed up to the duplexes for the night, and we got situated, with Mouth outside on the porch.  I took a moment to gather up all of my knives, from my backpack and belt, and stash them in the kitchen.  The last thing I needed was Brandon grabbing a weapon off my back when I wasn’t looking, and trying to use it to carve up something besides a stick.

With that, we headed off to bed for the night, after what had been a REALLY long day, and it was only Monday.  I couldn’t imagine surviving a whole week like that.  We have a phrase we joke about at work, after someone actually said it without thinking: “yesterday was a long week.”  Never had that been truer for me than right then.  But things would get easier once we sent Brandon home.  I couldn’t be expected to do a decent job of counseling the rest of my cabin if I was constantly dealing with his issues.  ‘Headed off to bed’ does not necessarily mean went to sleep.  I had a lot to think about after the events of the day, and although I am sure that I drifted in and out at times, I spent most of the night awake, keeping an eye on the bed in the opposite corner.

Night Hikes are Always an Adventure

When campfire was over, Paladin and I collected my cabin members, and we headed off down the trail on our night hike.  I usually take the lead, since I have exceptionally good night vision, but I asked Paladin to take the lead, since I wanted to keep an eye on Brandon, who I had in the back with me.  Now my night hikes are events where I try to teach kids how to adjust to the darkness, develop night vision, look at the stars, etc.  They are definitely not allowed to use flashlights without good reason, and on a few occasions we confiscate them from campers who can’t resist the urge to turn them on.  Within the first two minutes, Brandon has flickered his on once or twice, so I made clear to him and everyone else that we didn’t want that happening.  As we crossed the canal, and turned down Blackberry pass, I saw a few more flickers, and my brain was in overdrive I tried to figure out the best way to deal with the situation, in such a way as to solve the problem, while minimizing the chances of sparking a major confrontation.  While I was trying to figure this out, Paladin had begun to notice the occasional flashes, but since they were coming from behind him, he couldn’t tell who they were coming from.  He implemented his solution much more quickly, by walking back up the line and demanding all of the flashlights.  Brandon was the last one he came to since I had put him in the back of the line, and I had not intervened, since I figured there was a chance that Brandon would cooperate, and the situation would be resolved.  That of course did not happen, and Brandon made a rather clear refusal.  Understandably not ready to accept any direct disrespect from a camper, especially in front of the rest of my cabin, Paladin pursued the issue.  Not wanting to push Brandon into a situation where he would respond violently, I stepped in.

“Hand me your flashlight,” Paladin demanded.  “We told you this would happen.”

“It is my flashlight, and I will do whatever I want with it.”

“Paladin, I will take care of it.  Brandon, we don’t want to see anyone shining a flashlight during this event.  That means I don’t want to see your light on, at all!  Understood?”  “…Okay.”

Paladin was not a fan of letting something like that slip by, but went with me on it.  So we continued onward.  Now it had occurred to me earlier that the usual route that I took my cabin on during a night hike, was very similar to the route Brandon had taken during his little escape attempt a few hours earlier, including the drive back.  Not wanting to create a sort of Deja-Vu situation, since he was the type of guy who would read into that, before we left I had described to Paladin a different path that I wanted to take since he was in the lead.

Eventually we reached the paved road that leads up the hill from the ropes course, and we regrouped to begin the next part of the hike, where each of the kids hikes the stretch of path by themselves, to build confidence about being alone in the dark.  One staff member takes the lead and the other waits with the rest of the group in the back, releasing them one at a time every few minutes to follow.  I wanted to keep a close eye on Brandon, for reasons that should be obvious, so I sent Paladin up the hill first.  I sent everyone else up one at a time over the next few minutes, keeping Brandon there until the end.  Once I sent him up, I waited until he was near the range of my vision before starting after him, but I kept him in sight the entire way up the hill, and found Paladin and the rest of the group sitting at the edge of the road by the archery range.  It was at this point that Brandon decided that it was a good time to get a drink from the vending machine next to the Canteen.  “Hey, I am going to go buy a Powerade.”

My first response was fairly cautious, “Brandon, how about we not do that right now.”

“I am thirsty.  I will be back in a minute.”

Paladin had heard about enough talking back from this kid, and stepped in, “Hey, get back here, where do you think you are going?”

“I will take care of it Paladin.”  I stepped towards Brandon as he headed past me to the Canteen, and accompanied him in that direction while I talked with him, trying to regain some semblance of control over the situation.  Campers are not allowed to have cash on them at camp, for reasons including but not limited to: we don’t want to have a camper leaving the rest of the group to go buy a drink in the middle of the night.  I am sure this is one of many things that was bothering Paladin about the situation, but once again he backed off and let me handle it.

I was also very aware that the steps I would have to take to enforce a denial of his request to go buy a drink would not be worth the likely result.  Recalling Mr. Hassler’s advice from earlier in the evening, and observing that Brandon was becoming more irritable and less cooperative, I figured it wouldn’t really be such a bad idea get something in his stomach.  I told him, “that’s fine go ahead on get a drink down there, but hurry up, we need to be heading back.”

Paladin approached me as soon as Brandon headed down towards the Canteen, and we had a quick chat in hushed tones.  “What is going on?  He can’t DO that!”

“Don’t worry, I have things under control.”

“But he…You can’t-“

“-I’ve got it.  We have been instructed to show patience with him.” (That and I didn’t want a violent confrontation)

“Instructions from who?”

“Kevin…and Mr. Hassler,” which was a technically correct, but somewhat misleading statement, which I feel was justified at the time, but ultimately was used in other contexts later in the week.

“Alright, but I don’t like what is happening,” he replied.

“I know.”  At this point, I was totally overlooking the fact that Paladin hadn’t heard the story of what had happened earlier, and while he must have heard that something happened, he never would have guessed the magnitude of the incident.  As part of what became one of the largest communication breakdowns at camp that summer, I didn’t realize that he was totally in the dark about this for the entire rest of the week.

With that, went back and collected the rest of the cabin and started heading up the hill, picking up Brandon by the Canteen on the way.  It was a straight hike up the road, to the open field at the crest of the hill above Wild Oak, by the hay barn.  At that point we all took a seat in a circle on the ground, and had a talk about the stars, the universe, creation, God, and a few other things.  Brandon kept his inappropriate insights to a minimum, and the discussion carried on as it usually does.  Right as we were finishing, I saw Rocky drive by, returning to camp after his class, so I was anticipating a conversation with him upon our return.  We hiked down the last stretch of road into camp, and headed into the cabin.