Coopers Beach - Day 2

Day 2 - Thursday

The night following the leaders meeting was spent sleeping in the dorms. Or should I say, Emilee and Mikayla attempted to sleep while every other female in the dorm embarked on a long-winded chat session. I was in a cubicle with Sara and her friend Shannon. Shannon was to be the third member in our trio of music leaders. I found out that Sara and Shannon had some experience dancing and singing at camps and what-not. I felt a growing unease.

We eventually fell asleep, and despite the soothing sound of the waves from the nearby searoviding a nice atmosphere for relaxation, I decided after being startled awake for the umpteenth time by a minor noise to invest in some earplugs. I require total silence to sleep.
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Day arrived much to soon. I decided to skip the morning prayer meeting and attempt to get some extra sleep.

Later, after a delicious breakfast and clothing myself in one of the hideous blue camp leader shirts we were obliged to wear, I ambled out to the front of the hall to await my campers. It's a strange fact that my campers always seem to be the last to arrive. Other campers turned up and their leaders happily led them away to show them to their dorms, but where were my campers? I began to feel strangely morose. And bored.

My campers did eventually arrive, of course, and I took them off to the dorm with a plethora of crazy excitement. I have discovered over the years that first impressions really do work. If you introduce yourself to your campers as being this fun, happy person, they'll go on thinking that, no matter how grumpy you become later. So I skipped along, cheerfully hoisted their luggage onto my shoulders, and smiled and babbled all sorts of excitable nonsense. I got many strange looks, but as this was the effect I had carefully strived for, I did not mind.

Shortly after, Head Leader Peter arrived and reminded me that I hadn't paid my camp fees.

"Not to worry!" I said cheerfully. "I'll just head on up to the shops and get some money out." I went to my cabin and found my purse. As I set off down the gravel driveway, I wandered whether there was any way I could possibly get out of doing the music leading. If Sara and Shannon had lots of experience I wouldn't just end up looking like an idiot next to them, I'd be hindering them, too. I've never danced in front of a crowd before in my life, unless you count my brief stint in my high school musical of High School Musical where I played the part of insane drama teacher Ms Darbus, and then I did not dance so much as flail my arms about spectacularly. Perhaps if I just told them I was too busy, or felt that they could do it on their own, then maybe -

PAIN.

"AAAARRRGH!" I shrieked, clapping my hands over my face. Something incredibly hard had slammed into my left eye. I stared blearily around. I had walked into the wing mirror of a bus. I touched my nose. Was it broken? There was pain, but no moving cartilage as described in various novels. Just bruised, then. I felt under my eye. Was it bleeding? My fingers came away smeared with redness. Ouch, I thought. Still, it wasn't too bad. I shook my fringe over my eye and continued on my way. I kept my head down so that strangers wouldn't think I had an abusive boyfriend or something. I got my money, went back to camp, paid, seized Izak and forced him to look at me.

"Is my eye bleeding?" I asked him.
He peered at me. "Woah! What the heck did you do?" he asked, sounding both amused and horrified.
"I walked into a bus. Does it look alright?" I demanded, now slightly panicked.
"You walked into a bus," he said, as though to clarify.
"Yes. Well?"
"There's... like... a dent," he said.
"A dent," I repeated.
"It's not bleeding or anything, though," he added hastily, perhaps seeing my rising panic. "There's just a line..."
I began to run towards the nearest mirror.
"AAAAARGH!" I shrieked once I reached the bathroom, though it actually didn't look too bad. I tended my eye with loving care, wincing as I rinsed off the dried blood. I donned a hat with an amazingly "larpe" (large) brim and tilted it to sit over my eye as an elaborate disguise. I breathed deeply. At last I felt strong enough to venture outside.
I met Head Leader Sandi coming towards me as I walked. "Wow! What happened to your eye?" she exclaimed.
"Grrrrr," I muttered to myself.

...

The rest of the morning was given over to free time. This meant that the kids were free to do whatever activities around the camp they chose - waterslide, flying fox, kayaks, rifle range, basketball etc. etc. - while the leaders were obliged to run the activities. I was at the flying fox making sure the kid's harnesses were correctly fastened. I gave Mikayla and Emilee a crash-course in harness-fastenning and they helped too. After a while some of the kids convinced me that I should hav a go on the flying fox myself. I must say it did seem very tempting - zooming down the steepest hill I've ever encountered and along over the creek before crashing into some strategically placed tires at the opposite end. The kids' faces were contorted with glee as they lugged the flying fox back up the hill. What the heck, I thought. It sounds like fun. In all my five years of camps I'd only ever ended up going on the flying fox a handful of times.

I strapped myself into the harness, stepped up onto the platform arranged myself on the seat, surveyed the landscape before me, and had an abrupt change of mind.
"Ah," I said. The hill suddenly seemed that much steeper.
"Go!" shouted the kids when they saw my hesitation, and Fellow Leader Sam gave me a shove before I had time to protest.
"AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!" I screamed. I felt I'd been doing that a lot lately. My stomach flew up into my mouth as I whizzed through the air. The creek was coming towards me. I was sure I was going to crash into a large flax bush directly in my path, but no, I cleared it with ease, and now I was over the creek and my toes must surely be brushing the water, and then the flying fox was tilting upwards as I came towards the end and the tires were looming before me -

CRASH.

The fox hit the tires, my head was thrown back and one of my earrings flew off and landed in the creek. I was too dazed to care. I was unharnessed and after trudging back up the hill towing the fox behind me, the kids gave me grief for screaming so loudly as I went down.
"You screamed!" they giggled.
"And if I did?" I retorted, summoning the dregs of my dignity. "It is so much more satisfying to scream. I can only imagine the profound dullness you must experience as you traverse the skies without even an exclamation on your lips."
After explaining to the kids what the words "profound", "dullness", "traverse", and "exclamation" meant I spent my time trying to convince them to scream as they went down. I cannot say I succeedeed greatly. One boy grunted, "Argh," in an attempt to appease me, but the rest either ignored me or blatantly broke their promises to scream as they went down in absolute silence.
"Bah," I said in disgust.

...

Finally it was lunch time, and already I felt as though I had been forcibly held down and pummeled into a pulp. I was at long last able to take full stock of my team. Other Elliott was my male leader counterpart, with a girl named Sophie being my female Junior Leader. I had not spent five minutes with them before I realised that the two were greatly enamoured with each other. Indeed, for the duration of the camp they spent most of their time gazing soulfully into each others' eyes and inventing excuses to rub sunblock on one another. As for my little campers, they were as follows: Shelley, daughter of one of the Head Leaders; Elle, another relative; and Jodici, Sharkarma, and Tallulah, all of whom appeared to be related in various confusing ways. There were three boys, as well: Mackenzie, brother of two of my Former Fellow Leaders; a tiny boy named Nathaniel; and one other whose name escapes me at this moment. Collectively, we were called Over the Hedge, after the animated movie (this was a Hollywood themed camp, after all). We nodded solemnly in all the correct places during the traditional beginning-of-camp safety speech and were at last able to begin our meal. People were generally pretty astonished when they discovered I was vegetarian, and was compelled to explain just why I was vegetarian while ignoring the disdainful glances from Izak at the neighbouring table, who had seen me eat a double-pounder from McDonalds on more than one occasion.

Somewhat unluckily, my team was on clearing tables that day, and I spent most of my time rounding up unwilling campers and forcing them to wipe down benches and stack up chairs. Other Elliott kept mysteriously vanishing.

The afternoon was spent playing team-building games - tug of war, walking across a field with planks attached to our feet, and tying balloons to our ankles and attempting to pop other people's balloons.

Our team came second in the first plank-walking race, won the second leaders-only race (go me! and Other Elliot and Sophie, of course) and managed to come in third in the tug of war.

Our team had six rounds of the tug of war in a row. Six rounds. And two other additional rounds. This was on average an extra five rounds than what any other team had to go through. I was almost dead by the end. Add to this that the sun was blazing hot and I was wearing the ugly blue leaders shirt over my own top and you will not be surprised when I say that I felt like fainting. I had to drink water and sit in the shade to recouperate.

Then it was afternoon tea, and tuck shop, and more free time, and finally dinner time; and then came the Dreaded Event: chapel time. It was supposed to begin at eight-thirty, but because of my duties I was unable to get to the chapel to practice until shortly after eight. Sara and Shannon were already there going over some of the dance moves. Essentially, I was given a crash-course in all the moves to three songs, going over each of the songs once before the kids turned up. I was not panicking over my lack of ability; I was resigned to the fact that I would look like a total idiot, and my only hope was to dance as enthusiastically and as crazy as possible and try my best to copy Sara out of the corner of my eye.

The kids arrived. The music began. We danced.

Afterwards, Elliot complimented me on how I really seemed to enjoy what I was doing.
"I like how your foot was tapping," he said. "You could tell you were really getting into it."
"Well, I'm glad that my plan worked and that my enthusiasm compensated for other more important things, like skill and actual knowledge of what I was doing," I replied. Truth to tell, had enjoyed it. I decided I'd keep at it.
"You weren't that bad," said Elliot heroically.
"Hah," I said. "Thanks for the compliment, however untrue it was."

Of course, being me, I couldn't help but stride up to people and demand, "What did you think of my dancing?" and smile in self-satisfaction when they were obliged to say it was actually pretty good.

And then, oh, then, came the highlight of my day.

People might find it strange to think that forcing the campers to go to bed is my favourite part of camp. Most other leaders consider it to be the worst possible part due to the fact that the campers are really snarky and just will not go to sleep. But I love it. I stride up and down the corridor bellowing "THE LIGHTS ARE GOING OUT AT TEN O'CLOCK WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!" and watch with amusment the panicked looks of the campers when they realise they have only ten minutes to get ready for bed. I count down the minutes on my cellphone and shout it at the steadily ever-more irritated campers. In the meantime I visit various cubicles and chat to some of the campers, or sing, or spontaneouly start doing dance moves, and inwardly crow in triumph if a camper should say, "You're really weird, do you know that?" Some of the campers happened to be talking about High School Musical, and I bragged about how we did that for my high-school play and showed off my stylie Ms Darbus dance moves to rapturous applause.

At last - "THE LIGHTS ARE GOING OUT IN FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!" I shouted, and flicked off the lights. I ignored the entreating pleas of tardy campers who insisted that they needed the lights to be on.
"Oh, but please, I just need to find my toothbrush -" whined one camper.
"No. You should have done that earlier. Be quiet and get into bed." And, because I didn't want to be too mean, added, "sleep well, my precious."
I spent the next twenty minutes patrolling the corridor growling at people to shut up and go to sleep. Normally, in previous years, there would be Fellow Leader Nicole to help me. She'd been at this camp since time immemorial, but now she'd moved on to bigger and better things. This year, I patrolled alone. It was slightly odd to realise that I was now well and truly a Senior Leader. Every other female leader was here for the first time. I felt old when I realised that most of the other leaders were my age when I first started coming to this camp a good five or six years ago. But I was also quite pleased at the added responsibility. I now have Authority.

At last the campers drifted off to sleep. I was actually amazed at how quickly they succumbed to my will and stopped talking and went to sleep. Normally it takes forever for them to drop off. These campers were the most fantastic I'd ever seen. After a mere twenty minutes of saying shush to various whisper-prone individuals, I judged the room quiet enough for me to get ready for bed myself. I slipped into my sleeping bag, put in my earplugs, and spent an uncomfortable night in a hot, narrow bed.