Can someone explain what sailing is?

A sailing incident? (Long, but you may actually enjoy answering this question.)?

• I go to a summer camp and there are a lot of activities such as basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey, fort building, mountain biking, music, drama, arts and crafts, newspaper and many others. There's one activity available to all campers called "sailing" which costs $60 extra in addition to $500 dollars per session per camper. Each session is 2 weeks long and there are 4 sessions which is almost the whole summer. So if you wanted to go to sailing the cost would add up to $560 per session. We clear? I'm here there all of the sessions and I told my parents I wanted to do sailing for one session and this is the session I chose. Session 3. By the way right now it's the 2nd week of the 3rd session. So I've been sailing. Time to explain what goes on in sailing now that you probably know all the background information you need to know. In sailing what has been happening this session is that our instructor has been getting really mad at other kids for cap sizing the boat ON PURPOSE and not listening to him. I 100% agree with the instructor. People have just gotten outrageous this session. They'll be jumping off the sail boat on purpose, even stealing someone's Rutter by swimming to their boat. And I mean our parents have paid an extra $60 not for us to just have fun cap sizing and goofing around but to learn sailing. This is supposed to be a lesson. I don't mean to be all snitchy but seriously... Now today in sailing what happened was I actually wanted to do some quality sailing (by the way I'm pretty inexperienced but I know how to handle the sail pretty well), and our group was just jumping out and being lazy by saying such things like, "I don't want to sail," "I just want to swim." Really if they just wanted to swim why did they have to do it here when it's SAILING time. I told them to go to free swim if they wanted to "swim" and get out of here if they didn't want to sail. But they wouldn't listen to me they just went on and on for like 15 minutes. I even offered to compromise by letting them swim for a little while and then sail for a little while. But no, they refused. Then they started cap sizing on purpose and that was when I was just like "No," and started swimming away abandoning our boat (I know that wasn't smart of me) and I was only like 20 feet away. Then the sailing instructor came and started complaining, "Why are six people out of the boat," They replied, "They stole our Rutter." Then he asked me what I was doing but he wasn't very angry at me as much as he was at others. Then we were asked to pulled in and my group's like, "It's all your fault. You started swimming away from our boat." Actually it was mostly THEIR fault. I can accept that maybe about 10-20% could be my fault but it was them that were getting yelled at the most. The instructor wasn't even mad at me after getting pulled in. And they were the ones that were planning to throw WATER BALLOONS at the instructor! And they did! They were also plotting to blame the water balloons incident on me when I was just standing around so the instructor got so pissed that he walked all of the people that got pulled in (except for me because I wasn't involved in the balloon incident) to go up and do some work as a more severe punishment for the water balloons. Basically, all I wanted to do was get some quality sailing time in which is what should be your attitude if you're going to sail. I was planning to pick up some wind and sail. But look where I ended up for just wanting to sail. Tomorrow's my last day of sailing and I hope it goes well. I'd just like to here your opinions on what happened today.

• Answer:

  You need to pick better friends. If I was in that position I would find other students who, like myself, were serious about really wanting to sail and go to the instructor and ask him to just do a class for those of you who will pay attention and do it without goofing off. The camp manager might have to get involved to help the instructor with this. It really is NOT fair that people who have payed for something are having it ruined by others lack of respect for the activity. I suspect you want to have it both ways, to get along with your buddies by sort of participating in their goofing (you know you should have stayed with the boat) while still learning to sail. That;s the kind of decision that becoming an adult requires: which is more important to you, going along with the crowd in goofing around and tolerating their disruption? Or standing up for what YOU want to do and risking them teasing or snubbing you for sticking to your guns and being more "adult" in the situation. We all have to make that kind of choice eventually. Instead of whining about "why did I get blamed?" go to the instructor and apologize for your behavior and ask what you and other students can do to make it easier for him to offer the instruction you want. The camp staff should back him up in excluding any students that don't cooperate.