Well guess what I just finished a summer camp. So here’s the deal, I am a pretty not good person. Okay I guess I’m just probably a bad person. Saying “not good” to me sounds like a level better than saying “bad”.
In my defense I am used to working with High School student in youth group. This was not a High School camp…this was a Jr. High Camp. The first thing that I learned about Middle Schools boys is the vast difference between them and High School. Honestly it blows my mind to think about these little pre-teen boys are going to annoy the daylights out of themselves in only a couple of years! Jenn, I am pretty sure your boys are not in middle school yet, but when they reach that horrific age, I’m sorry.
Here is the first lesson I learned. The first night we are all sleeping together in one giant room on the floor in a church. Okay so I knew it would be difficult to get them to go to sleep. And it was! To the point where I pulled off an imitation of Gandalf when Bilbo is being a punk about the ring and then the room goes dark, the once happy and even playful Gandalf now towers over the tiny person in terrible authority, even the room bends around him. After several minutes of “Quiet guys” I finally erupted in the deepest my voice can naturally go “ENOUGH! You are being disrespectful! YOU WILL STOP LAUGHING! YOU WILL STOP TALKING!” The dead silence that came after was admittedly really gratifying. But of course me Gandalfing the room wasn’t enough and about 5 minutes later I had to complete move everyone and strategically place each kid to optimize their forced obedience. Now this would probably have happened in some degree with older dudes, but here’s the real tragedy, having them finally gotten to bed around 1 am, I hear them around 5:30 am scurrying around! All I could think was “my lord! I have to get up, I can’t let them roam around.”
Fast forward to the end of camp with the last night spent back on the floor of the church. It was a little easier granted, I was a veteran of knowing where to place each Christian delinquent. And in the Morning I kept saying “Quiet guys, some of the other dudes are still sleeping’. And inevitably little fart noises little whispers little giggling gets louder and louder. After saying “Guys, come on” about 10 times, I hit the dry wall (not very hard, but hard enough to make it sound really hard) and then said “Are you freaking serious?!? Why is this so hard? Oh no, nothing? NOW you’re quiet!? NOW you can’t answer? NOW you can’t talk?” The progression for my conflict resolution strategy went from Gandalf to Orc. For the record that worked like a charm and they all went back to sleep! Like back to sleep in the morning! Huge win!
There were many laughs between me and Levi, the other leader. We loved to make fun of them in secret and be super sarcastic most of the time. I know that sarcasm probably isn’t befitting a really young adult, or a really old child, but when you are constantly subjected to the extreme ignorant confidence of a Middle School boy it is impossible for me not josh around with them some. We looked around at like the other groups of dudes at the camp asking each other, “Do you think anyone else is saying ‘no’ to their kids as much as we do?” –Probably not-. We also think are convinced that our kids where the most difficult.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are some serious gems. God did great things in their hearts and eventually it will bear tons of fruit for Jesus’ mission. There are some kids, honestly, they are real jerks.
Ungrateful. Hypocritical. Pharisaical. Ignorant. Opinionated. Me.
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