Getaway! Day 2

Realtree camo tightness, teensy adorableness, and big, obnoxious, smokey fire!

• The Giggler fled the campground at the break of dawn, immediately followed by the hippies.  The Cocker Spaniel RV Kennel Club stands amid the smoke  like a lone patriot on the field of battle.  Impressed, I doff my cap in the general direction of all the barking.
• We venture to downtown South Haven.  A local bookstore is going out business, so we take advantage of the opportunity to pick over its one-dollar remains.  I notice there’s plenty of Irving Wallace to be had, but no David Foster Wallace (to whom this blog owes a certain debt).  This disappointment actually pleases me as it stands as a bracing reassurance of my place outside of the Reactionary Recreational Overlap.
• Still freezing my camoflage-clad ass off, I defy my long-standing boycott of church-sponsored thrift shops in search of a sweatshirt.  While rummaging through the racks, I see a couple married to  meth (and possibly also to eachother) enter the store.  I am horribly entranced by them as they shop for shoes.  Between the two of them, they must have almost as many teeth as your typical 2nd grader.  They sort through the beach-battered sandals while a pan-flutey, harp-plucky, vaguely Appalacian gospel song plays over the PA.  I find it hard not to envision their funeral.
• Mabel sabotages all meal preparations, every meal, every step of the goddamn way.  She is, after all, 2 years old and therefore chaos personified.  Utensils are relocated from the picnic table to the hood of the car; ingredients are squirreled away in pockets to be seriptitiously sniffed and/or nibbled upon.  She reminds us in her babytalk babble “I’m not a slave to the agenda”, a catchphrase I myself  taught her a few weeks ago.  She grins subversively and I feel an ominous chill in my bones.
• In my pre-vacation life, I was nice person amongst assholes.   Polite in the face of pushiness at work, considerate in the face of recklessness on the expressway, personable in the face of indifference everywhere else, I cling to a code of conduct that was probably killed by Jerry Springer sometime in the mid-nineties.   Now that I’m settled into the Van Buren Camping Community, I discover I am now an asshole amongst nice people.  I’m immune to the “Howdy, neighbor!” culture of the campground.  I sneer at the wood-burnt name shingles that swing gently in the breeze in front of the homier RVs, the Who Gives A Shit Smiths, the Choke On It Chuck and Tammy Tuckers, the Probable Cause for Cross-Country Swinger Suspicions Sandersons.  I avoid all eye contact as I walk the gauntlet of eager grins and will only acknowledge my fellow campers only when confronted with a point-blank hello between the eyes.
• I fly a Star Wars kite over the beach at the end of the day: Reactionary Recreational Overlap: defied!

Cold, grey summer fun!

Tags: social commentary