Some of my favorite memories of camp were sitting in my cabin surrounded by my bunkmates brainstorming all the hilarious pranks we could pull on (fill in the blank, either an equivalent boys cabin, or our counselors usually), a la The Parent Trap. Now keep in mind we almost never actually pulled them off, and certainly none were as complicated or technical as Google’s pranks yesterday. And while I don’t condone being a bunch of merry pranksters, I also must acknowledge that I learned a lot from my time behind the wheel.
I can only remember two pranks that we actually attempted as campers. The first was taking my counselor’s clothes and artistically placing them about the cabin, strewn in such a way through the rafters and bedrails as to be difficult to retrieve. While funny to us and obviously aesthetically pleasing, we didn’t think about how our counselor would feel, walking into the cabin and knowing that we’d gone through her things and then thrown them everywhere.
The second was much more complicated: my cabin decided to take forks from the dining hall, two per meal, until we had enough to make a path from the dining hall to the boys’ unit (when in doubt, blame it on someone else). We successfully took two meals’ worth of forks before our counselors saw one of us trying to pocket them, and we stopped (if I remember correctly, however, we never divulged what we were doing or what our ultimate goal was. Discretion was the most exciting part). Here’s what we’d neglected to consider this time: taking forks from the dining hall actually had an impact on camp. As we took forks, fewer forks remained in the dining hall. Now this seems like an obvious premise, but that sort of cause and effect is not always apparent when A. you are 14 and B. you are having fun. We assumed someone would notice the forks missing, but we didn’t think they would sorely missed. There’s a distinction there. No one considered that camp probably doesn’t have hundreds of extra forks laying around for prank-use.
As a staff member I was a passerby, a victim, and the wise elder guiding the pranks. I’ve seen campers get in serious trouble for pranking the opposite gender by taking their clothes and wearing them to formation (neglecting to consider how serious the rule is about not going into the boys’ or girls’ cabin). I’ve had tough conversations with other staff members about jokes they are pulling (“if you only prank ONE person, it’s rather similar to bullying, don’t you think?”) Perhaps my favorite was several years ago, when my cabin of 15 year old girls decided they wanted to have a stunt go down in history. It took a lot of late night discussion and strategic questioning to figure out what kind of caper would be appropriate. Ultimately, they landed on painting tons of rocks from formation and the woods, and creating a sign that said “Add some color to your day!” Lots of fun, could be done in secret, no one got hurt, in fact ultimately delivered a positive message...seemed like the perfect prank! Guess what we still forgot to consider? The nature of what we were suggesting meant rocks were being removed from the formation area, something that was bad.
It turns out there isn’t the perfect prank to pull at camp, probably because we shouldn’t be pulling them at all. This doesn’t mean they aren’t fun, funny, and hugely teachable moments. Elements of camp like coming together as a cabin to try and play a joke on someone brings people together, and also helps campers learn boundaries, with counselors there to talk things through and maintain those boundaries. I sure hope I haven’t just inspired a whole summer of campers to try and pull off the perfect summer prank, but if you were to consider it, make sure to think it through veeeeery thoroughly first. I’ve seen a lot of stunts, and only one makes it even close to that pedestal, and there’s no way I’m telling you about that.
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