We were at a boys leadership camp and were getting ready to hop in our pontoon boat to go across the lake to a location with team building activities. One of my middle school boys asked if he could go play pool by himself, while the rest of the kids got ready for the exercises. I told him no, and that he needed to go get ready an meet us by the dock in 1 hour. What did he do? He went and played pool by himself.

When the hour was up, we did a quick (mis)count and thought we had everyone there. We loaded up the boat and took off for the far side of the lake. It didn’t dawn on us that someone was missing until 30 minutes later when we were doing a name game and I realized that I hadn’t heard one of the names yet!

Naturally, I panicked and send our boat driver and a volunteer to go find the missing boy. They found him sitting on the dock with a makeshift fishing pole, just hanging out and catching fish (yes… he actually caught fish with his makeshift pole).

The parents, surprisingly, were very understanding and were glad that I owned up to my failure to do a proper head count and that I made their kid own up to the fact that he didn’t follow directions properly.

Lesson learned: Always do a proper head count (role call is best), own your mistakes, and make the kids own up to their mistake as well.