off.
“Ow, Omigod!” I yelled, and it echoed off the luscious green mountains. Flocks of birds were disturbed and burst out of the trees. Small woodland creatures stopped what they were doing and turned toward the sound emanating from my location at the archery range. I wanted to say much worse, felt the curses on my lips, but feared the repercussions. I swallowed them whole. Tears welled up in my eyes and I doubled over, afraid to see the blood that I assumed was pouring down my arm. I was whisked away to the nurse’s station to care for my missing skin, luckily only a layer or two and not much blood, and the upwelling of a bump and bruise forming on my inner elbow. I was now even more deformed. Between the forehead, the other crater scars and the messed up arm, I was turning into Quasimodo. NOT a good look for a pre-teen, who already had bad, thick, dark, curly, unruly hair. Bandaged and feeling low, I returned to my cabin for nap/rest/letter writing/package receiving time.
Much to my joy, I received a package from my mom, that lovely woman. Much to my chagrin, however, she had not paid attention to my instructions about how to smuggle me some contraband candy. They don’t allow candy to be sent to campers, so the camp opened all packages and removed visible violations. The trick was to get creative. Instead, my mother laid the large package of Twizzlers right on top. Nice work, mom. Now the camp directors would be snacking on my favorite candies. She didn’t even put any SweetTarts in the socks she sent me, as I had specifically instructed her to do. Yeesh. What was she thinking? Clearly, she wasn’t. Well, no letter from me today. Okay, maybe just a small note. I did really miss her and this Teen magazine was going to be super fun to read on my bunk bed. Besides, a light rain was starting to fall so I had time to forgive her.
The rain picked up and thunder and lightning moved in, the noise reverberating through the hills, rattling our screens. We ran to unroll the protective canvas flaps so that the beds wouldn’t get wet when the rain blew sideways through the cabins. Afternoon activities were cancelled, although we could hardly hear the announcement because the pellets of wetness struck the metal roofs with such fervor. The ferocious crashing and booming seemed to have settled in our little valley, pouring hellfire and brimstone onto our beloved camp. We saw a powerful light followed by an almost simultaneous round of thunder that sent all ten of us in the cabin into a close huddle on the floor. The lightning/thunder combo struck again and we heard a loud warble. The announcement system had been struck. How would we hear Reveille in the morning and Taps at night? Or the haunting version of the Lord’s Prayer set to music before drifting off to sleep? The flashes of lights, bowling thunder, and whips of rain continued for hours.
Afterward, we ventured out to assess the damage. Four locations on the camp grounds had been hit and the bugle box/announcement system was out of commission, just as I thought. The horse stables had a small fire, which was quickly put out by the fire department and a cabin had a hole in the roof. I’d been in bad thunderstorms before, no doubt, but this was the first time I had been so exposed to the elements; so vulnerable to the possibilities. I felt thankful to be alive.
So, it turns out that my twin never showed up at the camp. She must have chosen another one that summer and is still out there looking for me. But even without my Haley Mills moment, traveling to camp changed my life. I realized that I might be afraid of a lot of things but I could still do them. I might have diarrhea in the process, but I would still make it. I wouldn’t always remember that lesson of course, and would have to relearn it on numerous occasions, but I did have a moment of clarity right then. I didn’t get thrown from a horse, I didn’t shoot my eye out (skin removal is minor in comparison), my plane didn’t crash, I didn’t drown (although I swallowed enough lake water to introduce some sort of organism into my system, for sure), and I didn’t get struck by lightning. I did it all without my parents there to protect me. I had my best friend with me and we grew a little as people that summer. And not just from too many airline peanuts.
Hypochondriac Travel Tip #3
When nature calls, don’t say you will try to hold it until the next rest stop after this one. Trust me- it never ends well.
3
Lobster Fest
One year in my early teens, my parents decided with some family friends that we should all hop into their van and drive down to the Florida Keys for the weekend. I was an only child and my parents owned their own business, so we were often able to do these sort of last minute, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventures. In, fact, they very rarely planned a getaway more than two weeks in advance. If we had a good staff or manager at the business, which fluctuated frequently, then my dad would announce that we could go somewhere. So, on this weekend in late summer, we decided to make the eight hour drive to Key West.
The others involved were lifelong friends of my parents. The couple had known my parents in the good old Miami days, days of sunshine and yellow short-shorts (on my mom) and halter pantsuits (again, on my mom) that I saw only in pictures. I was born in Miami and my parents seemed to have good memories of their early courtship and newlywed years, so these were the “good ol’ days” in my mind. The woman in the couple, Maria, had been my mom’s maid of honor, but in an interesting twist, could not remember serving in that role. It became a big thing of showing her the pictures to remind her that she donned a pale blue dress and a beehive ‘do to stand by my mom during her nuptials. The couple had a young child, Michael, about four or five at the time of the road trip. They were game for an excursion.
With no reservations or planning whatsoever, we headed down to the Keys, singing songs at the top of our lungs, working on creating a great memory. We were Americana in an eighties van.
Sometime around the beginning of the Seven Mile Bridge, we heard from Michael, who had otherwise been very quiet.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay, as soon as we see someplace, we can stop.”
“No, I mean, I need to go right this second. I’ve held it as long as I can.” You could see his parents getting frustrated.
“What do you mean? This is the first we’re hearing about it. How can it already be an emergency?”
“It wasn’t an emergency. But now I’ve been holding it and it hurts really bad, and I need to go now or I’m going to pee-pee all over the car.” Everybody fell into a noisy cacophony, one person’s voice drowning into all others, a big stew of chatter.
“Ohmigod…Nowhere to stop…water on either side of us…can’t pull off…going to piss all over the car…that’s so disgusting…don’t you dare…will spank you if you do…it hurts so bad…” until finally it just sounded like large, unrecognizable noise.
Before we knew what was happening, my father rolled down his window and started pouring a Big Gulp cup of Diet Coke out into the wind. The wind promptly threw some of it back in through the window, where it found my mother’s face and hit it with a large slap.
“David! You just threw Diet Coke in my face!” She rubbed furiously at her eyes, now all brown and sticky.
“I’m just trying to give the boy some place he can take a piss,” he yelled.
“But I don’t have any napkins or a towel to wipe it off!” she yelled back. More commotion as the driver, Tom, leaned over to the glove compartment to dig for napkins collected from previous fast food stops. The car swerved as he took his eyes off the road. Everyone screamed and he veered back into his lane just in time to avoid a head on collision with a Ford sedan and the resulting trip over the rail of the bridge. The yells overlapped and cancelled each other out. We could see each other but our words would never reach past the obstacle of our neighbor’s words. I looked at Michael, and as his eyes bulged with pain and urgency, my mind raced through the horrific
