On Camping

Camping is one of those things that, upon closer inspection, doesn’t make a lot of sense, mainly because it’s a leisure activity that involves giving up modern conveniences in order to make yourself miserable for several days, which, when you think about it, is sort of like looking into the sun for entertainment purposes.

Now, I’ll admit that it would make perfect sense if people went camping for the sole reason of making it so they fully appreciated their modern conveniences upon returning home. (“That was terrible! I’m sure glad to be somewhere there’s a shower and a place to sleep not covered in eighteen layers of mosquitoes!”) However, what you’ll hear when you ask around is that people go camping in order to commune with nature, which sounds like a wonderful idea until nature starts communing back in the form of clouds of bugs with the ability to lift livestock off of the ground and curious skunks with hair-triggers.

So, unless their homes have been flooded or relocated to another state by a tornado, why do people go camping?

The answer’s easy: the low standards.

You see, when you go camping, conventional social standards are immediately flushed down the proverbial toilet, leaving you free to live like their forefathers, assuming they were gigantic slobs with eating habits that would make any dentist blush.

For example, one of the first things to go is the concept of daily showers, which is replaced with the concept of wallowing in your own filth, although I’ll have to admit that several advantages, such as:

• The smell will kill the attacking mosquitoes before they can even get close.
• You have more free time to get attacked by bears.

Not that hygiene is completely non-existent. Toothbrushes and deodorant are typically still used, and I once even saw somebody dunk their head in a cooler of melted ice, although I’m not sure if it was an attempt at cleanliness or a glaring indicator of insanity.

Another standard that disappears is shaving, which is why at any given campsite most of the male population – when they’re not pretending to know how to start a fire – spend most of their time scratching absently at their jaws. Annoying itching aside, as a guy I can say that not having to shave in the morning is a complete luxury, especially for those of us who can’t wear their stubble in the real world without looking like they just got hit in the face with a dirt clod. Thank goodness anything goes when you're camping, even if it makes you look terrible!!

As you might expect, since it goes hand-in-smelly-hand with not bathing, the concept of changing clothes is also nonexistent during camping. In fact, it becomes fully acceptable to wear the same pair of pants for multiple days in a row, even if you shred them terribly during a sprint through a thicket of thorns to escape what you thought was a bear but was instead a very loud squirrel. This is a truly liberating concept, and it also frees you up a lot of time to scratch absently at your jaw, although upon the end of a camping trip, I recommend that you just burn your clothing instead of trying to salvage it.

Another big reason for camping is that food standards drop to the point where it appears that two of your main objectives in life are to contract diabetes and thicken your blood to the consistency of Burger King shakes. Simply put, “eating healthy” is not a term associated with camping, and your food must consist exclusively of either greasy meat or simple carbs. Sometimes, however, despite the rules, people will try to sneak in something else, and these rogue actions must be strictly punished: i.e. salads or other green items must be confiscated and thrown directly into the fire, although fruit is sometimes allowed, assuming that it’s eaten with something from the Little Debbie family.

Another fun part of camping is the last few meals, when most of your food is gone and you’re left cobbling together random ingredients to see what you come up with. While this may seem to be a bit disgusting, one of the mystical things about camping is that food always tastes good, no matter what it is, assuming, of course, that it’s not a contraband vegetable. For example, during my last trip, we had peanut butter and jelly saltine cracker sandwiches for breakfast on the last day, and they were delicious!

In summary: Camping means no bathing, no shaving, no clothes-changing, and lots and lots of junk food, and when it’s put like that, who really cares about a several-hundred measly mosquito bites and the faint odor of skunk that'll follow you around forever, especially when you do finally get around to taking that shower?

Umbrella

I'm now the owner of a new umbrella, and since I’ve never had one before, I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

For starters, I didn’t buy it. It was given to me by one of my employer’s clients. Also, it’s bright red, to the point where if I ever used it, it’d look like I was getting dive-bombed by one of the Angry Birds. (Or a giant, flattened tomato.)

Now, as a guy, I’ve never felt a need to use an umbrella. This started way back during my childhood, where I would refuse to carry one to the bus stop on rainy days. This was because boys back then needed to be tough, since in those days you didn’t get trophies for everything, such as taking last place, or not putting your pants on backwards for the fifth day in a row, and by carrying an umbrella I would have been guaranteed to be beaten up as soon as I stepped onto the bus, mainly by my friends, since one of the official duties of being a friend is to make sure your other friends don’t go soft on you.

And so, in order to not be beaten up, I just elected to be sick a lot, which, I might add, was totally worth it.

But now I’m grown up and living in Minnesota, where we’ve just passed spring and have entered into the monsoon season, which is defined by the fact that it’s only pouring rain when it isn’t drizzling or misting. (At this point, investing in a canoe seems like a smart idea, just so I’ll have a way to get to the grocery store.)

Anyway, an umbrella might come in handy, but unfortunately, there's still a bit of the little boy in me who doesn’t want to be a wimp and get beaten up. That part of me wants to do the opposite of using an umbrella during a storm, which would be to strip down to my underwear, stand outside, and yell, “Is that all you’ve got???!!!! Bring it on!!!”

In short, I’m not sure if I’m going to use it or not. However, I can say that I’m already glad that I have it, for two reasons: One, when it’s not opened, I can pretend it’s a sword and use it to defeat invisible bad guys, which is a lot of fun, and two, I can entertain myself for hours on end by pressing the button and opening it, then folding it back up and repeating. (“Umbrella opens up! Umbrella closes! Umbrella opens up! Umbrella closes!”)

Well, I’m not going to figure this out by sitting in front of a keyboard. I’d better get down to some serious thinking. Unless, of course, some invisible burglars have snuck in, in which case I’ve been working on a few new moves that I'm just dying to try.