Michael D. Davis

I was going to start this little piece by saying, ‘Now, that camping season is nearing an end,’ but I don’t know when camping season is, so I’ll skip ahead.

Camping, it’s not my thing. Firstly, I am not an “outdoors” person. I am sure most of you already know that. I mean, no one has ever looked at me and said, “Hey, this guy chops wood on the weekends and has a predilection for defecating in the forest.” I like my indoors. I am the kind of person that can walk into his house on Monday then not leave till March.

When I was a kid, I had a tent. The thing was red and yellow, spring-loaded, you threw it on the floor, and it just popped up. I always had it in the middle of the living room. Where other children may have pretended to be camping in the woods, I always pretended it was like one of those secret rooms behind the bookcase like in the old mystery movies. Ya know what I’m talking about?

Anyways, I technically went camping once with my father when I was like five or six. We went out, found a good patch of land, and put up this old green tent of his. The patch of land had a great view of a mailbox and sidewalk as we were five feet from the front door of our house. The night started out fine. We had a little lantern, some blankets, and sleeping bags.

Now, my dad fell fast asleep because the man can fall asleep falling down a flight of stairs; he’s just that good at it. I, on the other hand, didn’t do that well. I dozed, I tossed, I turned. Around midnight, my dad hears a noise and wakes up. It was me, I was eating animal crackers. After I got my butt chewed and my crackers taken away, we went back to sleep.

I don’t know how long it was after another noise was heard. And, no, it wasn’t me; I already told you I had my rations taken away. The noise persisted, and I knew it had to be a bear. I know it’s not rational, but I knew I had such bad luck that it had to be a bear coming to eat me on my one and only camping trip. My dad and I slowly peeked out of the tent’s curtain door and saw an old lady in her nightgown walking down the sidewalk. The old woman kept muttering to herself and didn’t seem to know we were there. She just passed on by.

The next morning as my Ma greeted us at the front door, I was asked how I liked it. And, well, you guess the answer.