Fluent Brittish: The Girls Camp Chronicles: A Bit of Fun and laughter

Last week, I went to the DI to see if I could find something funny to leave on my friend’s bed at girls camp. It was too hard to only pick one thing, and I ended up buying a cart full of dolls and stuffed animals to take to camp. I also hit the jackpot and found two mannequin heads.

I packed all my dollies in a 27-gallon tote and hid them among the rest of the camp supplies. Then as camp got up and running, I began sneaking them into people’s beds. I started in my own cabin - where all of the stake leaders were staying. At that point, I hardly knew some of my roommates, and I wasn’t sure whose beds were whose, so I picked two at random and hoped they belonged to some gals with a good sense of humor.

Bed #1 ended up belonging to Julie from the stake YW presidency. She got this lovely gorilla man that sings “I Know You Want Me” by Pitbull

Bed #2 belonged to Shanece from our stake camp

committee who later confessed to me that she was surprised to find out I could be fun (she met me when I was all business)

From then on, I would just kinda sneak around camp and see what I could accomplish. I would put a few stuffies in a backpack and wander around until opportunity would arise.

This is my friend Laurel’s bed, and she put the dollies in our friend Sara’s bed, thinking they were from her, which made it all the better because it made my job easier when people started passing them around

This weird guy had a pouch in the back so I filled it up with candy, but I don’t think anyone ever noticed

When people started getting suspicious, I put a decoy in my own bed so I could say, “It’s not me! I got one too!”

How perfect is this chef bear? It’s like someone knew what they were doing!

So for the first 48 hours of camp, I was able to stay mostly anonymous and throw people off my scent.

I had one of the young women convinced that this pillow was from her secret sister:

She was so distraught because she couldn’t figure out why anyone would think she likes anime.

I also left some surprises for our priesthood holders:

The next morning at 5:00, I went in the cooler to start breakfast and found this:

I would sometimes check for unlocked cars to leave some friends in:

And I worked really, really hard to figure out which bed in a cabin of 16 belonged to my friend Krystle so I could leave her a surprise:

I waited and waited to see if she would find out it was me. I never heard anything. Then on the last night of camp, I found out it wasn’t her bed! I about died laughing. The poor lady who found this baby on her bed was so confused! (We’re friend now).

Laurel ended up sneaking a mannequin head into Krystle’s bed on the last night of camp and staying up waiting for her to find it so she could get a video for me. The best part is that Laurel and Krystle didn’t even know each other… but they do now!

Krystle named her Barbara

My favorite person to leave stuff for ended up being our camp director, Denise. She tried so hard to figure out who was behind it all, and I kept throwing her off my scent. I would say things like, “Denise, I wish I could say it’s me, but when would I have time to even do that?”

My big folly was when I stuck a mannequin head in Denise’s bed about ten minutes before Whitney’s seizures started.

The first aid area was in our cabin, and Whitney was on the floor battling violent tremors while several people came in and out. We had some priesthood holders, our camp nurse, and a couple of Whitney’s ward leaders coming in and out. The nurse was on the phone with 911, and Denise was running around with the walkie talkie letting the missionaries know we had an ambulance coming. Meanwhile there was this mannequin head scaring the crap out of everyone in the middle of an emergency, and I felt HORRIBLE. I kept meaning to go sneak it out of there or cover it, but I was on the phone several times with Whitney’s family back home, so I never got around to it.

We can laugh about it now that Whitney is okay, but at the time, I felt like a schmuck! That’s when I finally outed myself to Denise because I apologized to her for the bad timing.

On the last morning of camp, I found some little friends in my bed:

At breakfast I set up a “take home” table and put out a bunch of stuff that people could take if they wanted, so I put a bunch of the stuffies out there, and they all got taken.

Me with some of my supplies

My blond mannequin didn't make it back to me before the end of camp, but I had a feeling she was going to come home just fine. Sure enough, she turned up on my porch a couple of days after camp with a memory book of photos:

I love it so much! And the best part is that Krystle did this entire photo shoot the last morning of camp, so she was super busy to pull it off. She had to pack up her entire ward AND spend quality with Barbara before getting booted off the property by 9:00 a.m.

Here are just a few other photos