When I was about 10, my parents, my sister, brother, two of my aunts and two of my uncles, and my two cousins Michael and Danny all went to Yogi Bear campground somewhere in Indianer to camp for a weekend in the pop-up campers. Before I got too old and cool, I absolutely LOVED the trips to the Yogi. I'm not sure if it was the one water slide down at the murky brown beach, or the idea of living in a tiny folding house for a weekend, but I loved it. My cousin Danny was the same age as me, and we were practically inseperable growing up. He was my best friend for years to come.
After arriving and parking the pop ups, we had our hearts set on sprinting down to the pool. The adults gladly agreed to get some long needed drinking in, and told us they'd meet us there later. Michael had wondered into the forest to fish or something, and mom made me take my sister along. You know that one little kid that's always trying to catch up in the foreground with the floaties? That was her. The pool was unusually desserted when we got there. Just me, my sister and Danny--Danny cannonballed into the water, and I was being shy, pokin' one toe in at a time trying to get used to it. Eventually I got in and swam for a bit, and then got out to dry off. I remember the weather wasn't all that nice that day, so it was chilly. As I was drying off, I glanced over at the two girls who had shown up and were making a ruckus. They were being real nasty to each other, in a ‘playful’ kind of way, if that’s what you’d even call it. They were calling each other names and trying to pull each others bathing suit bottoms down...something that I obviously didn't want any part of. Suddenly, one of the mini-skanks looked in my direction--I wished suddenly that I was invisible, but I wasn't. The girl asked me, 'What are you a lesbian or something!?' Even though they were clearly talking to me, I responded with, 'Are you talking to me?' They giggled, and continued tugging at each others bathing suits..."Yeah lesbian! Why are you looking at us!?'
"I wasn't looking at you."
God, I wished my future self could have come popping out of a time machine then. My future self would have said some very colorful phrases and told those girls how I really felt. Obviously, they were the ones with the lesbian tendancies, and I wasn't looking to see them naked, I just glanced over to see the commotion was and that's all it took. They stood there taunting me for what seemed like hours.
My sister was too young to even realize what was going on, and Danny had suddenly become a pro at holding his breath under water and made sure to stay there for as long as possible to avoid helping me. I kept looking to him for help but every time I would look I would just see the top of his head and a halo of bubbles. I was a very sensitive little kid, so I’m just standing there, fighting back tears and these little fatherless skankazoids were just harrassing me…when who should pull up at the perfect time, but my dad to the rescue. He yelled “What are you girls doing!!?” And of course, they scampered off innocently without another word. Danny conveniently popped out of the water and said, 'Oh, we leaving?' I frowned at him. I'm pretty sure as we were getting into the van, Danny and I yelled, "JERKS!" or "IDIOTS!" or something a kid would say...Danny's favorite phrase as a kid was 'cheapskate', so it's very possible that he yelled that at them too even though it had nothing to do with the situation.
I told my dad what happened and as any concerned parent who's child is messed with, he started yelling and was tempted to turn around and possibly drown the little bitches, or something of that nature, and we all just laughed. Then he yelled at Danny for not helping me. I felt much better. I was never one to fight. I tend to clam up under pressurized or awkward situations. I'm one of those people who doesn't think of the good comebacks until 10 minutes after the fact.
Shortly after that fiasco, Danny and I found a new way to entertain ourselves. We somehow managed to convince my dad that letting us drive the golf cart he rented around the camp for awhile was a good idea. So we drove around for probably a solid hour before a cop pulled up and started doing what cops do, and just being a jag off…asking us for our licenses, even though we were clearly 9 & 10 years old, we were laughing, like yeah, we TOTALLY have licenses! We didn't really understand what the big deal was, we were tall enough to reach the pedals, the thing didn't go over 20, and we were in a campground. It's not like we were out on the expressway.
We tried to lose him by driving down a bike path, but much to our dissapointment the bike path was a loop and looped right back around to where he was waiting for us. So we got reemed for a minute, but he let us go, and we got our drunk Uncle to drive us around for awhile. He was driving through bushes and all kinds of pollen dusted shrubbery for our amusement, Red Dog beer in hand. I almost flew off a few times, got hit in the face with a few low hanging branches, but we had a blast.
I remember Danny and I spent a lot of time on a swing set too. It was one of those swing sets that's extremely tall, with very long swings, which gave us plenty of swinging power before we jumped off them into the sand.
I have plenty more adventures with Danny and I, but I have to really fish for these memories!
Note to mom & dad: Technically, that was my first encounter with a cop. Hehe. I know...not funny.
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