Stolen Cabin

[Skater Bubbles]

So I was just wondering what kind of tricks your ad staff play on you or what kinds of things they do when you don't do what your supposed to.

For example- at my camp having your cabin stolen is a big thing!! So ya at my camp we have to be with our campers 24/7 unless another counselor is with them or it is after 10:00PM and someone is on duty. So anyway if you leave your kids in your cabin alone or something - it's a big no-no. So what my ad staff does is they steal your cabin, so if you leave you kids in the cabin and you go take a shower or something when you get back your cabin will be gone and you have to go find them. They take your kids to some random place in camp and play a game with them or something until you finally find them. This has only happened to two counselors at my camp, but they have NEVER lived it down. It took one about 45 minutes and the other about 30 min to find their cabin and they were freaking out the whole time cause they lost their kids and they were in huge trouble!! -it is funny to me, but it won't be if it ever happens to me!

What about you?

[camper]

i've never heard of anything like that, but it's funny!

[Flukie]

Oh, we've "stolen" campers before. We push staff to make sure that they have people at the front and the back of the line - and that campers aren't allowed to just trail along behind. When they forget this, the ad staff has been known to pull the kid from the end of the line and see how long it takes for them to report a missing camper. :) We've also done this for Lost Bathers.

We didn't get to do it this summer though. :) Which is a good thing!

[Indigo]

I don't think my camp would do that... but it sounds really fun (though scary if you think you've lost a camper, or the whole unit)!

[CAMPFRIEND]

If I find campers not with a counselor I will take them and see how long it takes their counselor to find out. But most of my staff makes sure they know where their kids are all the time!

[rockinsmiles]

We dont do anything like that, but i think if that ever happened it would scare a counselor enough into never leaving a camper again. I've only left a camper once. And it was her who turned around and walked back to the cabin without letting me know. I was not a very happy person lets just say :)

[CIT386]

That is what my director will do. He has fun I think making us look for our campers. It's never happend to me and I hope it never will!

[Indigo]

Heh, last summer I managed to lose a few campers... I had one of the oldest groups (14-16), so they could go around camp with buddies. And quite a few times I had other staff members call me on the CB radio, saying that two of my campers were there wondering if they should stay there, go to the barn, or go to the unit (when we ALWAYS went to the barn after dinner).

[who_stole_my_loofa]

I don't think stealing a cabin or campers is funny at all. That's grounds for a missing camper search at my camp.

[Flukie]

Well, we definitely don't do it for fun. It's been done (at all the camps I work at) to make a point. When staff are not paying attention, we are not watching the campers. We're also more prone to do it on Mondays, which are drill days anyway.

[KiwiCRB]

My first week as a counselor i had brownies and during FOB i let three of them go to the bathroom together since it was just upstairs and like 10 feet away outside, i was sure they could handle going alone and they had before. I gave them 3 minutes to be back but 5 minutes later when they still weren't i got kind of worried. So i went up to the bathroom and, of course, they were not there. So i got on the radio and asked if anyone had seen them, and one of the counselors found them on a trail and took them to canteen with their own group. When i got there none of them had socks a hat or a water bottle and their excuse was i had told one of them they could mail a letter. That was one of my scariest moments this summer as a counselor and i'll be much more specific from now on when i tell campers they can mail letters.

[Skater Bubbles]

Ya one time I was teaching an outdoor living skills class and we were hiking the kids out to our spot and I counted the kids and saw that I had 19 so I had the other counselor be in the back and I led everybody in the front. About 5 minutes into our hike our nurse came up to us and was like are you missing a camper, and I quick counted all our kids and sure enough I only counted 18! He was all ya one of your campers was wondering past the infirmry crying cause some of the kids in your class were picking on him. I was like, oh!! I was not happy and I turned to the counselor who was in the back and he was all, well I dunno? I was mad at him because this kid was in the back and so when he was being picked on this counselor should have seen it and then when he left the counsleor should have noticed, but well it was just as much my fault as his cause we were both responsible. It was a bad situation!!

[rockinsmiles]

ive thankfully never had a camper go missing but there has been some close calls. like if i miss counted or forgot that a camper was in the infirmry or something. and i have had campers try to "run away" so to speak. it really scares me when i think im missing a camper. holy crap besides an unsafe camper (which that basically is i guess) it is probably the most stressful feeling at camp!