Pulled off a fun caper this weekend.

[Ben E Lou]

Gotta brag on this one, 'cause it was a ton of fun...

Had a trip this weekend with 30 middle schoolers from my Area up to a YL property in North Carolina. With the other Areas there, we had a total of around 300 kids and 50 leaders. We were done with all activities on Saturday night at around 10:15pm, and everyone was set to have free time until 11:15pm. As free time was announced from up front, though, I had the person doing announcements say, "Northlake folks, y'all need to meet outside on the porch with Ben for just a few minutes."

I pulled together our kids and leaders, and proceeded to tell the kids that they'd tracked in so much mud into their cabins from rolling down the hill earlier in the day, that the camp staff had gotten on to me and said we needed to make sure that those cabins were thoroughly cleaned. So, I said, rather than waiting until the designated cabin clean-up time on Sunday, y'all all need to go back RIGHT NOW and sweep and vacuum up all of that dirt, and that it would probably take up the rest of the free time (on the last night, no less...oooh..I'm mean). DAGGERS flew from the eyes of a couple of the 8th-grade girls who wanted to do the final night-time flirting from the weekend. A less-than-four-foot-tall 6th grader had FIRE shooting out of her eye sockets at me. One of my leaders (all of whom were in on the ruse) protested, "Are you KIDDING me? Come on Ben, it's their last night!" I called him down for questioning my authority in front of the kids. It was beautiful. Frustrated and angry, the kids headed back to the cabins...

...and I jumped in a car with the camp speaker, who took me a few miles down the road to a snow-tubing establishment that I'd contacted weeks before and convinced them to open up late (10:30-11:30, they normally close at 10:00) just for my group. I paid for all the kids and leaders to snow tube for an hour, then waited...

...meanwhile, back in the four different cabins my kids were staying, leaders got to be heroes: "Hey y'all, we can do this tomorrow. Ben is getting old and out of touch. He's just wrong on this one. Tell you what, we're sneaking out!" One of my volunteer leaders, a 45-year-old mom, was immediately pronounced THE COOLEST MOM EVER as she led them in sneaking out the back window of the cabin. In my cabin, the two high-school-aged junior leaders in there with me and six middle school guys for the weekend hurried back to the cabin, got all the guys in there, and immediately lock the door and said, "Guys, we've locked the door, let's go out the window before Ben gets back and starts banging on it." By all reports, it worked just beautifully. Kids were just STUNNED at their leaders' "rebellion." Our bus driver was dutifully in position on the roads behind the cabins. Troy, my intern, herded all of the kids on the bus and announced, "Hey y'all. I'm really sorry about Ben. He told me this afternoon that he was not going to let y'all have free time, and I just couldn't let him do that to y'all, so I called up Paul (the bus driver) and asked him to come out here and take us off camp to do something fun!" Kids were going nuts on the bus at that point, I'm told.

When they arrived at the tubing place (which isn't well marked, so they didn't know what they were there for yet), I jumped on the bus and just laid into 'em for about 10 seconds. Leaders and kids recoiled in horror. (I guess the kids assumed that I had found them by using my One True Dark Jedi Powers of Locate and Teleportation.) Then I finally said, "You know, if you thought it was a good idea to go sliding down a mud hill this afternoon, I figured it would be a MUCH better idea to GO TUBING DOWN A SNOW-COVERED HILL LATE AT NIGHT!!!! That's right, we've paid for an hour for ALL of us to go snow-tubing."

Pandemonium.

VIDEO CLIP ONE
VIDEO CLIP TWO
VIDEO CLIP THREE
VIDEO CLIP FOUR
BONUS VIDEO CLIP ONE (FROM ANOTHER ACTIVITY EARLIER IN THE DAY)

[albionmoonlight]

'Tis truly a blessing to love one's work.

Good story, Ben.

[Ben E Lou]

Oh...that's me in the red UGA fleece going down headfirst on the right in the first video.

[Bee]

It's nice to see you use your dark jedi powers for good.

[CamEdwards]

what other job can you get paid for messing with young kinds minds?

I mean there's parenting, but that's an unpaid job.

[Bee]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

what other job can you get paid for messing with young kinds minds?

I mean there's parenting, but that's an unpaid job.

Very true. In today's world, Ben could probably be sued for mental abuse...hehe.

[oliegirl]

I swear I heard Ben screaming like a girl in one of those videos!!!!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by oliegirl

I swear I heard Ben screaming like a girl in one of those videos!!!!

The only time I've screamed like a girl in the last 12 months is when Stafford announced his commitment.

[Coder]

It was pandelerious... I thought we'd be killed or even worse!

[pennywisesb]

Some of the best moments of my life were when I was a youth leader. This has to go down as one of the all-time best pranks ever!