Ooh, that's devious! And kind of genius, too. It won't work with every event—you can't really cooperate in the soccer game or relay race—but if you choose carefully and make sure the campers really listen to you, you'll be able to pull it off.
Your first attempt comes at the arts-and-crafts table. "Hey," you comment to your campers oh-so-casually, making sure Samira can hear you. "Why don't we work together on this one? We could make a really great picture all together."
You circulate around the table while your campers do their painting, dropping careful instructions as you go. If you get them to all work on the same picture, but make sure that your campers are doing enough on their own—and also subtly mess up the Blue team's work—then you'll come out ahead.
It's really tricky, but Cabin 12 is good enough at following your directions that they actually pull it off.
"I'm sorry, Blue team," Violet sighs at the end, wrinkling her nose apologetically at Samira. "It looks like the Green team has won this one!"
So, like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, you try it again.
"The Balloon Stomp is awesome, isn't it?" you say as your campers start to run toward the next event. "I mean, who cares whether you're jumping on green or blue balloons as long as you're having fun?"
"I care!" Justine shouts back. "I wanna win!"
"Me, too!" Maddie and Ava chorus in unison.
Which is when the Blue team campers start to join in. "Yeah!" shouts one. "We're gonna beat you!"
"No, we're gonna beat you!"
You manage to win a few more events over the course of the day, but it looks like your trick only worked once. Fortunately, you're pretty sure nobody could tell you were cheating.
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