Starting Fresh

Starting Fresh

Once we got back up to Wild Oak, Kevin sent Brandon over to the kitchen with Kodak to see if there was anything left to eat, and he and I were left leaning on the back of the Bronco.

“So, I guess we go back to square one, starting fresh…How do you feel about all of this?”

“Well I am not entirely comfortable with the situation, and…well that is pretty much it.  I am not comfortable with the situation.  I can handle whatever he decides to do during the day, but at night…”

“That is a good point.  We can send Mouth or Rodeo to sleep in your cabin, if that would help.”

“It would probably be a good idea.” I replied.

“I know it is going to be challenging, but hopefully we can make a difference for him.  He seems very confused and angry, but I feel like he is ripe for the word.”

“Okay, we will see how it goes.”

“Yeah see how things go.  I will be up here tomorrow morning anyway, so you can let me know how things are going.”

With that, I grabbed some snacks and headed off to the Hassler’s house for staff worship.  Once I arrived, I spent the next hour relaying the story to the counselors, lifeguards, and wranglers, who were all curious to know what had happened.  Importantly, the DAs and Paladin were not there to hear the story, since they were out supervising the campers.  Once we had discussed it and prayed about it, I had a chance to talk to Mr. Hassler about how to deal with the situation, and he was able to provide a few more practical ideas than I had received earlier.  At that point I wasn’t sure whether I should talk with Brandon specifically about what had happened, or totally ignore it under the idea of forgive and forget.  How was I supposed to explain Mouth’s presence?  Mr. Hassler also pointed out that people on medications were usually more prone to act unpredictably when they hadn’t eaten recently, so just before dinner would be a more likely time for problems, especially if he was hungry, and still adjusting to camp food.  I kept this in mind when dealing with other situations that developed later on.

Mouth was there when I got back to Wild Oak, actually preparing for the campfire devotional that he was scheduled to give.  We chatted for a few moments and I filled him in on some details.  He told me he was planning to sleep on the porch of my cabin, and we talked about options for my night hike.

 “Do you feel comfortable taking him?” Mouth asked.

“I guess so.  Paladin will be with me out there, but I don’t know if Brandon even wants to go.  And if he doesn’t want to go, I definitely don’t want him out there with us.”  That would have been great, having to chase him around in the dark, trying to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else in my cabin.

“Ask him, and if he wants to go, take him, and if he doesn’t, he can stay here with me, and it will be fine.  You shouldn’t cancel it just because of him; you should definitely take your guys.”

“Okay, thanks Mouth. I will go talk with him”

So I headed down to find Brandon at the campfire pit as they were starting to build the fire.  I was conscious of the fact that I had no idea what this next conversation had in store for me, but I knew that it needed to happen.  I told the staff members who were trying to get me to prepare for the campfire skits not to count on my presence because I needed to talk with Brandon, and didn’t know how long that would take.  I beckoned him up towards the dining area, and while I could feel that he was about to rebel against me and stay put, he seemed to decide that it wasn’t worth it, and proceeded to follow me up the hill.  We sat down next to each other at the first table, looking down towards the rest of the camp preparing for the campfire ceremony.

After a second, I started, “Well to be honest I am not sure exactly what to say, but I know we need to have a talk.  I have a couple of questions to start off with, and we will just have to see where it takes us from there.  Okay?”

“…Alright.”  He was fairly apprehensive about the situation.

“Well first off, a few straight forward ones.  Do you know if you are susceptible to Poison Oak?”

“I think so, but I will be fine.  I haven’t been in any recently.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that.  You may have been a little distracted at the time, but you definitely came into contact with some.  You should definitely make sure you take a shower at some point before you go to bed tonight, regardless of how late it is.”

“…Okay”

“And speaking of late, that brings me to my next question. You may recall that we were planning to go on a night hike this evening.  Do you still want to go?”

“Yeah…I guess I will go.”

“Are you sure?  Because if YOU don’t want to go, I don’t want you to.”

“Yeah I want to go.”

“Alright, then you can go.  That takes care of that.  Well…I have one more question for you.”  It was time for a gamble, which definitely came into play later in the week, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but after all that talk about how you hated camp, what caused you to decide to stay?”

He got a bit uncomfortable, for reasons that became obvious as he spoke reluctantly, but I was amazed at how open his response was.  “Well it was because I maybe…kind of think I might…sort of like someone.”

Well there is nothing like a clear warning, so I knew of one other thing to watch out for this week.  That was just what I needed, a mentally and emotionally unstable camper who had a crush on some girl.  While we had about fifteen girls at Wild Oak that week, only two of them were in the Sportsman program, spending activity time with the guys.  That would seem to make my job a bit easier in that regard, but both of them were in my cabin’s activity group all week.

At that point I asked if he had anything else he wanted to talk to me about, but he of course declined, so we headed back down to where they were beginning the camp fire.  I was relieved that that talk had gone well, albeit a little shorter than I anticipated.

Although there were no major incidents, Brandon behavior during the campfire left something to be desired.  To begin with, his occasional participation was devoid of enthusiasm, and he provided a number of inappropriate comments.  Interestingly enough, the specific topics that Mouth discussed during his devotion dovetailed perfectly with what Jesse had been telling Brandon, while they were sitting on the side of the road a few hours earlier.  They dovetailed so nicely in fact, that Brandon began to make comments about how convenient it was that Mouth was speaking on those topics, although Kodak and I are probably the only ones who really understood what he was referring to.