Today we had a little bit of something we like to call "camp drama." [Because I don't want to share the names of these kids on the internet for privacy reasons, I will name one Prince William and one Prince Edward. Don't ask how I came up with them, they were just the first things that popped into my head.]
For the past week or so we have been having problems with Prince William. He is always being tattled on by of the other kids for bullying them and we have even caught him in a lie once or twice. He is just one of those kids that you pray and hope will stay at home instead of coming to camp that day. Prince Edward has been at our camp for the past 4 years. He is usually well-behaved and even when he gets out of line, when you talk to him about it, he always steps right back in.
According to Prince William and Prince William's mom, Prince Willy and Prince Eddy are inseparable friends and do everything together. Butttttt, when you talk to Prince Edward and Prince Edward's mom, Willy and Eddy rarely see each other and actually don't like to spend a lot of time together.
CONFUSION
Anyway, on Monday, Prince William's mom came in and talked to the counselors about how her son is being bullied and how he comes home every night from camp upset about the kids calling him names and picking on him. We try to tell her that it is actually her son that is doing the bullying and hurting other kids' feelings, but to her, her son walks on water. [NO reasoning with a mother with that mentality]
So today, Prince William and Prince Edward had a little falling out. I found Prince William crying in the corner after lunch. He explained to me that Prince Edward told him that he no longer wanted to be friends because he was a bully to the other kids. [Makes sense to me] We brought Prince Willy and Prince Eddy into the staff office and let them discuss their feelings toward each other. Everything seemed to be going pretty well between them until Prince William made a remark that really smacked me in the face with a red flag.
"If I stop bullying for the rest of the week, then you have to be my friend and play with me next week."
WHAT?!
He has to play with you. Definitely not. I explained to him that Prince Edward does not ever have to play with him or be his friend if he doesn't want to. I was trying to tell him that for the rest of his life, no friends should ever be forced, nor should he want them to be forced. If you have to force someone to be your friend, then you shouldn't even want to be friends with them in the first place. I think at that age (10 years), it is difficult to really have "good" friends. I mean, you have your friend's you see at school and sometimes that is that only place that you get to see them. Families are busy now-a-days with tons of extracurricular activities that all the kids do, that sometimes it is hard for children to see their school friends outside of school.
I think that is what happened in the case today. Prince Willy and Prince Eddy were school friends during the last school year. But when summer came, they rarely saw each other and then when camp started, they made different camp friends and when they wanted to come together, they just didn't mesh quite as well as they would have hoped. Hopefully Prince William will find his place in the camp before anything else bad happens and there is more "camp drama" to take place.
This just really got me thinking about my friends and how they have changed from different schools I have attended and different sporting teams that I have been on and different clubs that I have belonged to and different stages that I have gone through in my life. It is amazing to look back on your life and think of all of the people that you had, in one time of your life, called your friend and now you wouldn't even call them your acquaintance. It sounds like a bad thing to say, but I really don't think it is. All of those people were friends at that time for a reason; whether it was to teach you something, either about the world or about yourself, help you through something or whatever it may be, they were your friends at that place in your life.
God places people in your life for many, many different reasons. Embrace them, but please, do not force them.
