The Pranks of Summer

Sophie Natansohn '20

Once at camp, my cabin broke into the cabin for the girls one year younger than us and basically trashed their cabin, which isn’t morally correct or a very nice thing to do. In the summer of 2016, my two best friends, Amanda and Elisa, and I were three of six in a cabin for first session. Out of the six of us, we were the more outgoing ones who liked to do more exotic things, even if they sometimes got us into trouble. Before the incident, we had been feuding with the girls below us. Looking back on it, I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it was because they stole our cabin sign, and they were overall annoying. One day right before the night activity, Amanda had the great idea to prank them when they weren’t there. “I’m in. It’ll be so funny!” I said, trying to encourage the other girls to do it. After some time, we finally convinced the rest of our cabin to help us with the devious prank. Right when we were about to sneak in, my counselor Alex yelled, “I’m not helping or being a part of this whatsoever. If you guys get caught, you’re going to be in trouble with the director, and I’m not getting you out of it.” Although this made us nervous, we still decided to go for it, because “Who cares? It’s camp!” as Elisa would say. With the quietest girl in the cabin, Hattie, on lookout, we slid into the dark cabin called Tasadel and began what would be a massive prank. First, we started with the mattresses, and stacked them up in the bathroom of the cabin, right in front of the back door so they wouldn’t be able to enter. After that, we weren’t sure what else to do. “Let’s take their trunks to Ribbit!” Amanda exclaimed, and we all decided that they’d never find them there. With much effort, we lugged all eight trunks to the abandoned cabin of Ribbit, cobwebs and all. All that was left in their cabin was shelves, which we turned in towards each other so that they wouldn’t be able to get to their stuff. When we were just about to finish up, we heard Hattie’s yoohoo yoohoo yoohoo, which meant that they were coming back. As fast as we could, we sprinted back to our cabin and onto our beds, making it look like we were there the whole time. After about three minutes, we heard screams and confused voices, as they realized all of their stuff was missing. When they figured out that it was us, they told their counselors, which resulted in our getting a lecture about how what we did was vandalism, and if we did it again, there’d be “serious punishments.” Even though we got in trouble and our counselor was mad at us, I didn’t regret it at all. Although hiding and ruining people’s stuff isn’t a very good thing to do, it was still very fun, and it was what makes camp and easygoing and light as it is. The prank was a hilarious and exciting experience that my whole 2016 cabin can share, which is pretty special. Now, when I think about my summer in Bob-Inn, I think about how we pranked the younger girls with no regrets, because camp makes us the type of people who do spontaneous things. As Amanda would say, “We did it for the memes!”