How did I get there?

The details are vague, but I think I know why I’m not fond of tent camping.
I was a Junior counselor at a summer camp for a sort of gentle reform program for 7th and 8th graders. It was called Earn and Learn.
In my life Earn and Learn was magic. I was a camper the previous year, recommended because I was often late to school, to the point of… a real problem. So the summer between 7th and 8th grade I was the camper. Wow, I’m silenced for a moment realizing how much I want to say about that surely life saving program, about their way of challenging us, helping us learn and grow. Well, another post of the 30 maybe.
Anyway, camp both years was a lot of outdoor activities like a many mile bike ride, horse back riding, swimming across a small lake, ketchup and mustard fights, repelling… and tent camping the year I was a counselor. I’d never been camping outside of snug cabins with soft bed and cold tile floors. But I was about to have an experience of the great outdoors. I remember walking quite a ways, though it may have been a less than enthusiastic inner attitude on my part that made it seem like a long walk. So there were lots of trees and grass. And our tents which were set up by those who know. Likely the whole experience would have faded from memory except that it rained…and rained and rained, until we had to leave camp much earlier than expected and trudge all the way back to the main camp (carrying our soggy, heavy everything), the one with cabins, a dining hall and a kitchen we worked in til 1am many nights scouring the walls, the floors and anything else with a surface, having been told that an inspector was coming soon after our stay, that we needed to make the place far cleaner than we found it. Looking back I wonder if that was true or if it was a way to build character in the young staff. Work til 1am, wake at 5am, or was it 6? It was the latest I’d stayed up after getting up the earliest I’d been up after getting to bed the latest/earliest I ever remember over and over!
That’s all I remember about that my tent camping endeavor…blah!
In all the years since, I hadn’t thought a single bit about the possibility that I would ever do such a ridiculous thing again. Fortunately or unfortunately for me, I married a man that would happily bed every night in a sleeping bag under the stars miles from anything. So far we haven’t since we had a baby 13 months after our wedding. We did sleep in a tent once when the boys were much smaller, a few paces away from a perfectly nice cabin. But I understood. Even the illusion of camping helped…a little. David’s just waiting patiently until spring when we can take our boys on a real camping trip since they are old enough to appreciate what he can teach them of his love for nature.
I guess never going as a family when I was little makes a big difference too. It’s completely off my radar as a way to spend a weekend. But this marriage thing, it requires doing what the other person wants, even if we feel uncomfortable or just bored. The one and only time I went shopping for a dress (I was part of a wedding for a dear friend) he came with me, all through the mall, to store after store, for hours and hours. For one evening we experienced what stand up comedians have tons of material about and we could see why all the jokes are a hit! He does lots of house work, tries his very best to remember all my friends names and pretty much lets me make plans for all of his off work time.
I was only aiming to write a few words about that soggy expedition, but I think I’ve just talked myself into suggesting a family camping trip!