Shark Bait, Ooh Ha Ha

When Cristy and I first met, she was suspicious that I might be the kind of chick who during camping trips sits in the tent with a fan and a portable feather bed complaining about the ants and the heat. On the contrary I actually enjoy camping; I love packing all the essentials and arranging the camp site. I especially love sitting by a camp fire with friends and listening to music or catching up on all the things we forget to talk about during our crazy day to day lives.

That being said, when I am camping and a number of things are all going wrong at the same time, and those things are making me increasingly more uncomfortable, then I can get a little bit upset. Cristy might call it hysterical, I just say “upset.”

So, all was well with the world when we went to bed Friday night. No rain as predicted, air mattress had no leaks which meant I wouldn’t spend the night with my shoulder blade digging into the ground and Koda was only barking at every other person rather than all so that was impressive. Around 1:00am I woke up because my bug bites were starting to materialize on my feet and itched like crazy. Why bug bites on feet itch 20 times more than bug bites other places I might never know, but they were huge and itchy. The first solution I came up with to avoid sitting up (which as we all know makes you more awake and less likely to fall right back asleep) was to rub my feet on the sheets. This worked surprisingly well which then alerted me to the fact that half of the sand from the campsite was now inside our tent and in our sheets (thanks Koda.) The sand helped me scratch those bug bites (which I am now convinced were inflicted by those giant mosquitoes from Jumanji,) however sand in sheets is not conducive to sleeping.

After more feet rubbing and scratching my irritability level was reaching dangerous levels as I noticed not only the abundance of sand but the fact that I was sweating like a polar bear wearing fleece pajamas in the Sahara and I also now had to pee. Not the kind where you can ignore it, lay on your side and go back to sleep but the kind where your body is saying “get the hell up you idiot.”

I crawled over Cristy and the dog, searched for my flip flops for what felt like 20 minutes and limped (I am still recovering from a broken toe) out of the tent and over to a patch of grass to squat. As you may or may not know, toes are very important in balance. That combined with the dark, no glasses and the fact that I was slightly delirious from being woken up by the Jumanji Bug Bites all meant that what should have been a quick pee was anything but. It was 10 minutes of misery. Ready to fall back into my beachy bed and attempt to sleep, I limped and wobbled back to the tent, only to hear Cristy ask me to get the Oreos because her sugar was dropping.

This is where I started to loose it. It took me 10 minutes to pee right next to the tent (downhill away from the tent of course) so how long was it going to take me to get to the car and back!? I literally cried and whimpered the whole way to fetch the cookies and the whole way back to the tent. I knew it was irrational but hey, it was 1:30am and I was not quite myself, OK?

As we settled in and I waited for the crunch crunch of cookies to stop so we could go back to sleep, I started to hear noises. At first I figured it was just my delirious mind playing tricks on me. I mean, giant Jumanji Mosquitos don’t REALLY exist!? All of a sudden a large Beast started hurling it self against the window of our tent from the outside. I was prepared for the worst, I started trying to explain to Cristy what was happening as she was yelling at Koda. She assumed it was simply Koda bouncing off the tent walls on the inside like a pin ball. By the time she realized that there was a Beast trying to enter our tent by force head first like an Angry Bird, the Beast was trying to come through the door on her side of the tent now! She was literally pushing it away with her fist from inside the tent as I retreated to fetal position in the dead center of the air mattress. We felt like bait inside a shark cage at the bottom of the ocean, no where to hide as we awaited our gruesome fate. I call this animal the Beast because what turned out to be a dog reminded me of the Beast from the movie The Sandlot. Once Cristy was brave enough to go outside it turned out all this Pit Bull wanted was to play with us or Koda. Cristy returned the dog to its drunk and stoned owners who were confused how the dog could be attacking our tent while simultaneously sleeping in their tent. Cristy had to try to explain that the dog was NOT, in fact, sleeping in their tent.

Once the adrenaline wore off and our friends Sarah and Mel were convinced that we were not dead and the Beast was not going to be attacking either of our tents any time soon, we all drifted off to a sandy, itchy, hot sleep.

The next day arrived and proceeded without any more incidents. Lunch, drinks, dinner, wading in the river, reading, talking and relaxing. All the things camping is supposed to be. Cristy and I were tired early that night due to the previous night’s brush with doggie death so we retired at 10:00. I tell you it wasn’t 10 minutes after we laid down when I heard it. BOM bom bom bom, BOM bom bom bom. Tribal drums! Coming from the camp site next to us! Now, I don’t know if you have ever tried to sleep through tribal drums before, but it is simply impossible. I can only conclude that this drummer was the one who had summoned the Jumanji Mosquitoes because it was the very same drum beat from that movie. The VERY SAME!

I grabbed up the new lantern flashlight we had brought because it had the most light and stomped over to that campsite. I was prepared for the worst and figured Cristy, Mel and Sarah would have my back if it turned out to be a site full of drunken sumo wrestlers or something. On the contrary it was 4 or 5 middle aged ladies with a single drum.

I started mumbling at them about dogs and sleeping and drumming making me insane and I told those ladies that unless tribal drumming was part of their religion they better quit. They did quit so I must have looked pretty intense with my crazy bed hair and psycho eyes, shining that light in their startled faces.

The next morning all was quiet again just like the morning before. I would say I thought these events might have been dreams except for the fact that there were witnesses. Next camping trip I think I might step up the high maintenance factor (Cristy already assumed this to be the case so might as well give in) and bring a sound machine, a fan, citronella lamps, a dust buster, and I don’t know, steel plated walls for the tent?

I would like to make a quick disclaimer about this blog, if you have never seen The Sandlot, Finding Nemo or Jumanji then this was probably not very funny, my apologies.