Girl Scouts Leadership Lesson #3

You can learn leadership lessons anywhere if you pay attention. I learned so many that one weekend at Girl Scout Camp. I’m surprised to this day how many things went wrong, which meant there were so many things to be learned.

So back to the story. Feel free to read lessons one and two. We tie-dyed shirts, which was cool. Nothing thrilling happened there. But we had one girl who continued to struggle with homesickness. She wouldn’t allow us to distract her, her friends couldn’t console her, nothing worked. I remember climbing up to the top of the road, looking for cell service, hoping I could connect and tell her mother to come get her. Sorry kids, no service.

While we were cooking dinner, things seem to be settling down. She was settling down. But then. It rained.

I’m not talking a sprinkle or two, I’m talking rain of biblical proportions. Sheets and sheets of water. Lightening crackling and thunder booming. We were under a pavilion thank goodness, but there was no way we could make a break for the A-frames and call it a day. Bummer.

The homesick child who had literally just calmed down started up again. Now everyone was upset and nervous. And it just poured and poured. It just wouldn’t stop. We were down in a valley and rivers began to form, coursing downhill and washing into the pavilion. We were forced closer and closer to the middle of our shelter. We tried singing camp songs, but no one was game for that. Not that I blame then. It was wet and kind of scary.

Suddenly, a couple of SUVs rolled up. It was the camp officials telling us that we had to evacuate. I did tell you that what could go wrong did go wrong, right? Evacuate? What? Where?

Apparently there was a large house nearby and we needed to take shelter there. A house, really? Why didn’t we go there in the first place? Oh that’s right, we were camping. I guess it was a blessing that we didn’t have to go A-frame to A-frame to corral the girls so we could evacuate. We grabbed our half-cooked dinner, piled into our vehicles and set off for greater shelter. Of course, we had to have another mishap along the way. The leader slammed the door on her daughter’s fingers by accident. Ouch. More crying commenced, not that I blame her. I mean, ouch.

The building was cold and dusty but dry. It had indoor bathrooms and a working kitchen. Sweet. While the girls ran around complaining, the grownups continued to cook dinner. It was pretty late by the time everyone was fed, but the food was hot and filling. And a bonus, cleanup was much easier than lunch.

Afterwards, we sat around a huge table and tried to entertain everyone. We finally settled into a round-robin storytelling exercise where each girl was to add something to the story. Normally these are pretty funny. We were just catching the groove of the game when the next disaster struck.

Disaster in the form of a small mouse that literally ran across the wall in front of the girls. Really, I’m not making this stuff up. Shrieking commenced.

Like ticks, I am not a fan of mice. Mice are not cute.

What’s the leadership lesson here? Sometimes you just need to go with the flow. Take a deep breath, because your job isn’t done yet. You still need to be the voice of reason and work to calm the group. Again, mice are not cute. But they are also not the end of the world. We took deep breaths. We calmed ourselves and then wrote the mouse into the story. I mean really, who could make this stuff up?