The time I tied myself up with rope

Like boarding schools, I always wanted to go to camp. I finally went during high school, and while it had the camaraderie and inside jokes, we didn't actually spend much time at camp (we went on extended excursions). I made up for it all by being a counselor and then co-camp director during college. It was a small girls camp, so we had a lot of flexibility in programming. So if we wanted to make candles, we made candles. If we wanted to swim a lot, we swam a lot.

Sometimes we took this flexibility too far. My second year there we got a hold of this book in the camp library (which doubled as the staff lounge and nurse's office, if that tells you anything about the size) that described all sorts of fun jokes and ruses you could do. Inspired by the book, we attempted our first prank. The girls cooked all their meals over the fire, and they'd come to the program center before meals to pick up their food. One night we pretended that someone had stolen their food. Laying the blame on a certain counselor, we led the girls on a hunt around camp, complete with clues. The clues finally led them back to the program center, where a lasagna dinner awaited them. We figured they'd love a break from cooking dinner, but they were pissed. Apparently we were too convincing.

Unfortunately our first effort didn't deter us from trying another, more complex ruse. We chose a session with an older group of girls, thinking they'd enjoy the joke more. The prank consisted of pretending that a counselor (me, in this case) had been kidnapped. We did this activity after dinner, when the girls assembled for evening activities. I'd written a cheesy lipsticked note on a bathroom mirror (something like "help! back trai.....") and the other counselors pretended to find it and got the girls involved and they took off down the back trail, finding shreds of this ugly lost-and-found sweater vest I'd donned earlier along the way. Finally they arrived as a wooden platform where I'd tied myself up with rope. As the girls approached I quickly grasped that this prank had gone even more awry than the first. The girls were petrified. I shot a quick look at the other counselors and tried to let them gently know that is was a joke so that they didn't feel too embarrassed and to get them to laugh about the whole thing. They got there, but not after us swearing off pranks forever. But the laughs we had planning and recapping it were certainly worth any of the trauma the girls experienced.