While chaperoning at Marissa's 6th grade retreat, the girls in my cabin got about an hour of free time before lights out. During this time, they took showers, got ready for bed, then often spent the rest of their time braiding each other's hair, telling stories or joking around. One girl, a budding artist, sketched quietly in her bunk, the "scritch scritch" of her pencil heard throughout the conversation. Marissa worked on word searches with a friend and engaged in the room's banter.
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| How many braided heads can you count? |
In the meantime, I compared notes with a parent who was chaperoning in a boys cabin.
When it was free time, none of the boys took a shower. Instead, they took all the thin mattresses on all the beds and spread them across the floor to make a huge wrestling pit. The chaperones drafted brackets and they had themselves a wrestling match. The loser of the previous match was the announcer for the next match, while someone else would flicker the lights on and off as the boy trumpeted, "And now...in this corner, we have the ever amazing, ever strong...Evan!!" And they were off.
This chaperone is the dad to two girls and was looking forward to chaperoning a boys cabin because he never gets "boy time," as he put it. I suspect he was the biggest kid in the room.
They had very different ideas of fun, both pursued with enthusiasm.
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