Connie Goes to Camp

Thunder is still rumbling over Camp What A Nut when Lucy Cunningham-Schultz and Jill come creeping back into the girls' cabin and scare Donna Barclay nearly out of her skin. Donna is certain the Goatman has finally come for her. The shrieking brings Mrs. Neidlebark, who has no patience for goat men and even less for the discovery that these are the same two girls who wandered off from the group that afternoon, the girls Connie Kendall and a handful of counselors are still out searching for in the rain.

Connie, telling the whole story in a letter home to her mother, has been tramping through the soggy woods herself when Lucy and Jill turn up and find her. She decides to save her reaction until everyone is safely back at camp.

The next morning belongs to the boys. Counselor Fred Zachary gathers Cabin Seven to announce who they will face in the day's big competition, and the answer stuns them: Cabin Four, a girls' cabin. Jimmy Barclay is sure they will win in a walk. Fred asks whether that seems fair, and leaves the boys to puzzle over which side he means.

In Cabin Four, a smaller contest is already brewing. Allison cannot stop talking about television, quoting shows and slang until Donna and Robyn Jacobs are ready to scream. Allison points out that the two of them talk of nothing but hair, jeans and shoes. So a deal is struck. No more talk about clothes and looks, no more talk about TV, and the first one to slip loses.

Connie, meanwhile, has Lucy and Jill to deal with. Jill sleeps in another counselor's cabin, so her punishment is not Connie's to hand out, and both girls come away with a warning. Lucy tries to explain herself. The lectures were boring, Jill knew about waterfalls and wild horses, and for once Lucy did not feel like being the responsible one. Connie answers that rules are rules, and then, once Lucy is gone, quietly wonders why doing the right thing does not feel better.

The competition begins at the archery range, where the boys discover that the girls can actually hit the target. With the score tied and one shot left, Oscar Peterson somehow lands a bullseye. Robyn steps up to answer it, and Jimmy shouts that she has mud on her brand new t-shirt. Her arrow sails wide, the boys take archery, and even Fred admits that was not very sportsmanlike. The canoe race evens things up, mostly because the boys paddle furiously for a full minute before noticing they never untied the canoe from the dock.

Between events, Jill finds Lucy again with a new secret and a new invitation: ten o'clock, outside the cabin, no questions.

The tiebreaker is an Egg in the Hat relay, run with upside-down hats and one very fragile egg per team. It ends in chaos. Robyn mentions her new jogging shoes, Allison erupts in triumph because that breaks the deal, and the egg lands where the shoes are. Down the track, the boys' egg quietly cracks inside Jack Davis's hat. Nobody wins.

That night Connie gets the whole story of the deal, and tells the girls that helping a friend change is fine, but it has to be done in love, not like this. Apologies go around. Then Connie offers a better idea than simply trying not to think about television: fill your mind with something worth thinking about instead. She shares the words from Philippians about dwelling on whatever is true, noble, pure and lovely, and suggests that this is what the Apostle Paul meant about clearing the garbage out of our heads.

After lights out, Lucy slips outside anyway, but only to tell Jill that she is done sneaking off, even when Jill dangles an old underground air raid shelter down by the lake. Before Lucy can get back to bed, Mrs. Neidlebark's flashlight finds them both.

The next morning Connie does the hardest thing she has ever done and sends both girls home. Jill offers to take the blame alone; Connie tells her it does not work that way. Lucy accepts it without arguing, and says she is sorry for hurting Connie. Writing to her mother afterward, Connie finally understands the old line about this hurting the grown-up more than the child. She understands, too, how much it must have cost the person who once had to fire her, and maybe even a little of how God feels when he has to discipline the people he loves.