Camping: Just Say No

A very dear friend of mine may have tried to invite me to go camping. I say "may have" because she sent me an IM that read "hey, do you camp?" which I understand is often followed by an invite to go camping with that person. My response though, "i most certainly the fuck do not," may have quashed that invite before it was ever made, so we'll probably never know.

I was being serious though. I most certainly the fuck do not camp, because outside has bugs (especially spiders) and also, camping is stupid. You people with the camping: what is wrong with you? Is indoor life and comfort and easy controlled cooking making you so unhappy that you just can't stand it and need to go sleep on twigs and eat crap that you cooked over an open flame? That is not my idea of a vacation. A vacation is being even more comfortable than normal, where someone else cooks for me and I can take a bath in a great big jacuzzi (not a river) and I can crap on a shiny gold toilet (not carry around little baggies to clean up after myself because I have to poo in the woods). I demand loads of pillows, dammit, and I demand that someone else makes my bed, which had better be a mattress on a frame and not a sack on the ground.

Oh, and before you go telling me that I can't criticize because I don't know what I'm talking about, let me just inform you that I have, in fact, been camping. Once. Because once was more than enough. I went when I was young with my friend who lived next door and her parents. To be fair, they may not have been the best people to try out camping with. Mrs. D was a charm school graduate (no joke) who had got it into her head that camping would be romantic despite that fact that she is even less suited to camping than I am. The woman brought, and I kid you not, LASAGNA for us to cook over a fire and eat. We rode the whole way to the campground in a rickety truck they had borrowed. I was stuck between some folding chairs and a stack of lumber (why?) and so by the time we got there both my shoulders were bruised all to shit. It was not an auspicious beginning.

My pain and unhappiness was nothing compared to that of Mrs. D. We pulled into the campground and discovered that (gasp) there were other people camping there. And those people were dirty and looked suspicious. She didn't like it. She informed her husband of this via a running commentary, "John, I don't like this. I don't like this John. John, I can't stay here. Please don't make me stay here John..." growing more and more hysterical the further in we went. Luckily for her, the campground appeared to be completely full. We stayed in a motel that night, which itself was filthy and it smelled like B.O. She would not allow us to walk on the carpet without socks on for fear of what might be lurking in the grime that was once a floor.

The next day we found another place to camp and the fun began!

That was sarcasm. No fun began, it was NOT fun. Putting up a tent? Sucks. Washing off in a cold murky lake? Sucks. Sleeping on the ground? Sucks a big bowl of dicks. S'mores? I hate marshmallows, s'mores totally suck. Spiders? HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING GOING TO THE WOODS ON PURPOSE? In fact, aside from this blog post some 20 years after the fact, there was not one single good thing that came out my attempt to go camping. No, there most certainly the fuck was not. Suck it, campers. Camping sucks.