The End of a Very Long Night

Once we had finished Illuminaria, we all hiked down the hill into Wild Oak.  I sent the rest of my campers into the cabin to prepare for bed, while I held Brandon back to talk with him.  I explained that I have a chat with each of my campers on the last night of camp, so I wasn’t singling him out, but that I had a few questions for him.  We talked for awhile, but nothing significant came out of that discussion.  Mouth and Paladin were waiting for him in Pinto cabin when I was done.  I followed him up, to ask Paladin to supervise my cabin while I had individual talks with my campers, as had become our regular practice.  He agreed, and left Mouth and Brandon alone, heading over to my cabin.  I had explained how this was to work to my kids earlier, so the first one came down with little delay.  I filled out the survey paperwork over the course of my discussions, but added one more question to my regular list.  Normally I ask them if they have any questions or comments about camp in general, and then about God, the Bible, and things that we discussed in cabin huddles.  This time I also asked if they had any questions about the situation with Brandon, as to why he was still here, etc.  There were quite the variety of responses, but they seemed to understand that he was still there because it was good for him, not because he deserved it per se.  I managed to dodge questions pertaining to exactly what had happened during dinner on Monday, because while I was being pretty open with them about the situation, that didn’t seem like a necessary detail to divulge.  I wanted to know what they would be telling their parents when they returned home, and make sure that I had addressed all of their concerns.  I figured it would be nice to avoid another complaint like my “BullsEye is a militant counselor” one from Week 4.  It is not that I was really worried about that, I just wanted to make sure that they had an accurate idea of what was going on, and why.  A few interesting details came to light over the course of these discussions that I would never otherwise never have discovered.

In a discussion with one of them, “Well I hope that you don’t feel that Brandon’s presence here this week has been too detrimental your experience at camp.”

“No, not really.  I only feared for my life once.”

“Excuse me?!?”

“At carnival tonight, he picked me up by my jacket and was threatening me.”

“What happened?”

“Someone had thrown a water bottle or something at him, and he wanted to know who did it.  I was just the closest one next to him,” my camper replied, as if those actions were somehow justified.

“Well what happened then?”

“He calmed down after a minute and put me down.  I have sort of kept my distance since then.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone about it?”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal. That would have only made him angry with me.  I have been trying to be nice to him, because he kind of scares me.”

“Well I am sorry that this all had to happen during your week at camp.  You have done a great job dealing with it all.”

It became clear through these talks that the cabin had definitely banded together to deal with Brandon, so I guess their closeness as a team is one positive result loosely stemming from Brandon’s presence that week.  But that aside, I came to really understand the effect that Brandon had had on these kids that week, and concluded that agreeing to keep him in such close contact with them had probably been a mistake on my part.  Between that and his behavior during Illuminaria, I decided to make sure that he would not ruin the last cabin huddle that my cabin was scheduled to have the next morning.

Mike was the last guy to come down and chat.  He had totally recovered from his ropes course ordeal that afternoon, and we had a good talk about it.  At the end of our discussion, I asked him if he knew what my name was.

“No.”

“Remember when we were up at the top of the Leap of Faith this afternoon?”  He nodded.  “And Mouth was trying to get your attention and he yelled ‘Mike!’ up at us?  And we both yelled yeah back down at the same time?”

“Yeah…?”

“Think about that for a second.”

It took a good fifteen seconds, but finally I could see it dawn on him as he started to smile.

“Really?”

“Yep” I gave him a hug. “Alright kiddo, time for bed.”

Being around 1am, that was an understatement.  When we got back into the cabin, I found that Paladin had been keeping them busy by filling out the camper feedback forms.  The first words out of his mouth were a statement about having no biased effect on them, which is interesting, because each of them said something like “Paladin is the coolest instructor in the world” on them.  I guess that was just a weird coincidence.  Right before he headed back to Pinto for the evening, Paladin had a quiet chat with me.

“So I have been talking with your guys, and they tell me that Brandon called you a Jack*** three times during Illuminaria.  Is that true?”

“Pretty much”

“Well I have talked with all of your other campers, and every single one disagrees with that.”

“Really now?  How about that.”

“Yeah, so obviously Brandon was wrong, so you shouldn’t let what he says bother you.”

“Ah…don’t worry, I wasn’t planning to.  I don’t put much stock in the idle remarks of my emotionally unstable problem campers.”

“Oh, and your campers didn’t believe me at all when I told them your last cabin complained that you were a militant counselor.”

“Well I guess that problem has been solved then now, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, have a good night BullsEye.”

“Good night Paladin.  Alright everyone, it is definitely time to go to sleep.  Have a good night.”