being a villain

It was back to Shipwrecked for one last time this past week. We decided to really switch it up and go for more of a Robin Hood of the Seas plot line with some similar mishaps and ship wreckage throughout the course of the week. I played the role of Admiral Nottingham, the meanie who was taking things from the people. We staged this whole thing where I took the candy from the people (aka campers) and Robin's crew came in fooled me, and got all the candy back and returned it to the people. For my grand entrance, I met the kids on the waterfront right after their rules talk. My lines included,

"I only have two rules: Rule #1 What's mine is mine. Rule #2 What's yours is also mine."

I was putting on a thick Southern accent and really channeling Anna Reynolds and the deep country. This is a conversation that happened immediately after the kids met my character between a Disco camper (age 6) and the Discovery mayor D'Brev:

D'Brev: What's wrong bud?

Boy: It's just really sad. We won't be able to go swimming this week.

D'Brev: Why not?

Boy: You heard her. What's ours is hers. She's gonna take our bathing suits.

Why he immediately assumed that I would steal his bathing suit is a mystery, but D'Brev managed to clear that up with him pretty quickly. 

There were times when I really liked being the villain. I got to sink the other crew's ship and kidnap Robin. At one point, the good crew was feeling so low that they had to express themselves through song, which is why Wynd-it and I rewrote the lyrics to Taylor Swift's "We are never ever ever getting back together" to sound more like "We are never ever getting the boat back together." I pretty much cried with joy throughout the entire performance as I was on tech rather than singing myself. I got to be super sassy and cranky all the time, and the campers would try to prove that I was the bad guy. I (as myself, Rogue) covered for a leader's hour off one day, and this chalet of boys spent the better part of the hour discussing how I could or could not be the robbert (yes, that is robber with an extra t at the end). One line of evidence that was presented was that the robbert was a girl and that I too was a girl. They definitely had their thinking caps on for that one. Blaze boys are amazing. 

At the end of the week, the whole camp played this game where I as the Admiral had challenged them to see if they could scare off my crew, the toughest, roughest crew on the waters. To the Discovery Village, I issued the special challenge of having to find me (I hopped on an open topped boat and paddled out to hide behind one of the large voyageur canoes we keep moored out in the lake). Disco flooded into paddle boats and a canoe and chased me all around the AC waterfront. They eventually caught up to me, circled me, and trapped me in a paddle boat prison. It was so awesome! When they got me out of my boat and brought me to the beach, they buried my feet in special sand traps so that I wouldn't be able to get away. There was even one little boy who tried to encourage me and cheer me up as my character was upset that she hadn't won the challenge: "It's ok. Everybody has to lose sometimes." 

I can't even believe that Week 8 starts tomorrow. A number of my friends from previous camp years are up to be part of camp this week, like Pipes and Daffi and even a few more. We have an extra set of hands on the program team this week, which we are definitely going to need. Program next week is going to be insanity because there are so many things that we will be doing: Glow Show, all-camp campfire, regular theme but pumped up beyond belief, preparing for and executing Friday Night Live (FNL- an extended time of staff appreciation for the end of the summer). I am so excited that all of this is happening and that I get to be a part of it. I've always had to leave camp early (the latest I made it to was the end of Session 7) because school starts earlier in the South than it does in Canada, so it is such an incredible gift that I get to stick it out til the end this year!