Tag Teaming the Little Rebels

There were a few of us who had the afternoon activity period off, so Brooklyn and I were explaining to other staff members what had happened that morning.  All of us were disappointed we hadn’t been able to push the issue a little more with Dylan and Sergio.  They had had a bit of a bad attitude all week, and we had been hoping that they would learn something from attempting the Leap.  I had been unable to really relate to them all week, and felt like I had not helped them grow much through their experiences that week.  Someone brought up that, due to his previous experiences, Ricky would have been better at relating to them and connecting with them.  It was already Friday afternoon, and Ricky was a counselor with a cabin of younger campers at Buckhorn that week, but that didn’t deter Rocky from trying to set them up together.

So we piled into Rocky’s truck and headed down to Frontier.  After clearing it with MC-5, Ricky was all for letting Rocky take his cabin while he spent some time with my rebellious campers.  It would also give me some quality time with the rest of my cabin members, since those two had negatively affected most of the week.  We decided to be fairly passive in bringing about that situation, instead of being openly confrontational about it.  Things went smoothly and Ricky hung out with my cabin while they ate their Canteen candy, and then eventually pulled Dylan and Sergio away to have a talk with them and take things from there.  I spent the next hour talking with the rest of my cabin while we played cards outside the pool area.  It was good to have a talk that stayed on the positive side for the first time all week.

But dinner time was rapidly approaching, and there was no sign of Ricky or my campers, so I sent the rest of my cabin back to Wild Oak with FX, and went to investigate.  Rocky hadn’t heard anything either, so I hiked down to the ropes course.  As I approached it, I saw a number of cars along the edge of the road, a few people walking around, and I could see more than one person up on the side of the tree.  As I got closer, I could tell that Dylan was up in the tree, and Mouth had lobster clawed up to chat with him.  Ricky was belaying from across the bridge, and was talking with Sergio who was sitting on the ground nearby.  Rodeo had just arrived to replace Mouth in the tree, and Kodak had just driven up as well.  From the things Dylan was muttering, it was obvious that his attitude had not improved.

I was worried about the mess I had gotten Ricky into, but he looked down as I crossed the bridge, big smile on his face.  “Is everything going okay?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, it going great” he replied.  “This guy did it in like five minutes” he nodded towards Sergio, who was grinning.  Dylan on the other hand, was taking a lot longer than five minutes, and wasn’t being very cooperative with the people who were trying to help him.  As I was leaving, Rodeo had just finished suiting up to climb, and came over to ask us a few questions:

 “So, did we force him to do this?”

“I am not sure, I wasn’t here.  You have to ask him about that” I replied, pointing to Ricky.

We looked over at Ricky, who gave a big smile and nods, “Pretty much.”

And with that, I headed out to relieve Rocky, and successfully herded Ricky’s campers down the hill to Frontier.  After that, I took a hike back to Wild Oak, to catch the tail end of another meal.  We didn’t hear from the guys at the ropes course for another hour, and we had started the Friday night paintball game by the time Sergio was driven up to Wild Oak.  At that point we were informed that Rodeo was walking back with Dylan, who had been very uncooperative and hostile, refusing to come down for two hours.  Sergio’s attitude had improved dramatically from the experience, and it was obvious he had learned a lot, both from completing the event himself, and from seeing Dylan’s response to the same situation, and its outcome. I was expecting Dylan to be all bent out of shape when he arrived, but the recent events seem to have left no visible effect on him.  He seemed to have a level of respect for Ricky, but the rest of us weren’t too high up on his favorites list.  While Dylan didn’t seem any worse off from the ordeal by the time I saw him, unfortunately he didn’t seem to have learned as much as Sergio had.  I would like to think that Ricky had some affect on him, with the help of many other staff members who made it all possible.