Rain...

At 1:30am Tuesday night, I found myself standing in my living room with PDP and Counselor A. I vaguely remember them knocking on my bedroom door, myself and two alert bulldogs tumbling out of bed and then walking out to talk to them, but it was all very dreamlike.

Apparently his boys were being loud, obnoxious, refused to turn off their flashlights and he needed help. The boys cabins are a long, dark walk away from my house, so we got into my car and headed to his cabin.

I turned on the light and asked what was going on. I told them that they needed to quiet down, go to sleep and if I had to come back, we would be waking up their parents, regardless of the time. Having the director show up, half asleep and crabby, is enough to scare most kids into better behavior and it worked like a charm.

The middle of the night wake up call should have been a warning that yesterday was going to be interesting. It rained all day today. We made it through activities, sending the canoers into the lodge to build boats and having the fishers make cute fish crafts. It was a long day, but the kids and staff were doing well. We moved the dance party to last night, hoping today would be sunny and we could make s'mores over the campfire.

During the dance party, I was in my house, taking a quick break while everyone was occupied when Counselor HP ran in and said I needed to go to the health center because the fire alarms were blasting. It was POURING rain, so I threw on my rain coat and headed over. There wasn't a fire, but the whole building was SCREECHING and the fire lights were blinking. Nurse J and I flipped the circuit breaker, pushed on the smoke detectors, and even attempted to dismantle one of the alarms. Finally, we called the fire department and asked them to send someone out.

It was almost time for shower time, and Nurse S was already at the bathrooms, preparing to hand out medication. Except that she didn't have the medication yet. She had gone for the dance, and Nurse J said she would bring it. But we were waiting for the fire department, so I grabbed the two giant boxes, put them in my car and was about to drive there (keep in mind, it is still POURING at that point), but just as I backed out, Counselor HP runs up, directing the fire truck and so I told him to drive my car and drop off the medication. He responded with, "I don't have a drivers license." I asked if he knew how to drive and he said yes, but he struggled to get the car into reverse and I was panicking that he was going to end up in a ditch. He had to go around the backside of camp because the short path to the lodge was being blocked by the fire truck.

I ran back to the health center to talk to them (apparently a power surge from lightning can set it off and you just have to wait 20 minutes for it to re-set). A few minutes later, PDP came to the health center, looking for the medication and I said, "I sent HP in my car, isn't he there?"

We both went running out of the health center, ran through the pouring rain to look for him, my car and the medication. At that point, I was completely soaked, as if I'd fallen in the lake. When he came running towards us from the archery field, I feared the worst, as my car was no where in sight. He had gotten lost, didn't know how to turn on the de-frost and so he'd abandoned the car and come to find us. PDP went to get the car and we brought Nurse S the medication.

When I stopped to take a deep breath, I shook my head- this was not one of my finer moments of leadership. I'm not sure why I panicked and felt like the medication needed to be rushed to the lodge so badly that I put a staff who couldn't drive in my car. In the moment, it felt like a necessary response, but really, I could have waited a few minutes and drove them myself. I think the combination of the blaring alarm, the pouring rain and having to shout everything I said made it feel like more of a crisis than it really was. But everything ended up just fine and camp continues.