R&R

Chris and I got home a few hours ago from our vacation. We went to my parents' camper on Weiss Lake, which was a compromise between my desire to go camping and Chris's desire to have a roof over his head. My litmus test for whether or not a camping trip can be categorized as "roughing it" consists of only one criterium: is there or is there not a restroom? There was one onsite, but it was about a half-mile away from our camper. Still, I would have to say that no, that's not roughing it, because it ended up making me feel even more city-fied in the long run. Every time I had to pee, I weighed my options, and pretty much every time I opted to hop in the car and drive to the bathroom rather than bare myself to the inadequate cover of pine trees.

The day we got there, the place was deserted. There was a tornado watch in the county and everyone had cleared out that morning. Chris and I, having no Plan B of course, decided to stick it out and count the seclusion as a bright side. It was kind of creepy, though. It's a private campsite with a locked gate. All the members have keys and just come and go as they please. But somehow, in the six months or so since the last time our camper has been used, my parents' gate key got misplaced. So we had to park outside the gate, one of us staying with the car while the other walked around to look for the caretaker and get a key from him. Chris did the staying and I did the walking (I'm a little more familiar with the territory). The caretaker, Benny, is always on the move in his cute little golf cart, doing odd jobs and keeping an eye on tenants. So I'm looking for a moving target, which basically means I'm wandering aimlessly through woods and dirt paths and run-down, scary-looking campers in an overcast pre-storm ick.

I'm thinking to myself, "This is how horror movies start. Some dumbass girl and her dude go camping and there's some convenient reason to get separated, like, 'You stay with the car so you can move it if anyone else wants in'. And she's looking for the caretaker who she eventually finds decapitated, with his head sitting in his golf cart next to him. Then she starts screaming like a banshee, attracting the attention of whatever stalker-killer is still undoubtedly nearby, and runs back to the car. 'Thank God', she thinks, 'I've made it'. Then she walks up to the still-idling, strangely silent car where she, not being close enough to see clearly inside, starts babbling and blubbering to her dude that they have to get out of here and call the police. When she finally makes it to the door and peers inside, Chris's head is sitting in the passenger seat."

Then I tried to decide if I would survive in that scenario, or if I would be the Drew Barrymore character and bite it early on. I ultimately decided that Chris and I were definitely main characters and that this beginning sequence was merely a tension builder. The dying wouldn't start until that night at the earliest. But I did need to go ahead and accept the fact that poor Benny wouldn't stand a chance.

After I found Benny and got the key, I told Chris my theory. We spent the rest of the trip running scenarios. "Let's put the gun in this drawer. The killer will probably get hold of it, but it's right next to the utility box with all the knives in it, and he'll never expect that because it just looks like a toolbox." Et cetera.

We had fun times, even though the serial killer missed all his cues and we made it out unscathed.