What I Don't Understand

Yes, indeed, I could write a book with that title. Every holiday weekend we swear we won’t stay at the campground because there are too many idiots who literally disturb our peace with their misbehaved dogs and children while they drink all day and night and play around with illegal fireworks. I have to admit that it gives us great pleasure to get up early the next morning and walk Rupert through the campground. These transient campers are typically hung over, sitting by campfires with grumpy kids who still wanted their breakfast (imagine that) and dogs who haven’t stopped barking since they pitched their tent or pulled their noisy pickup trucks up to the campers they only use for holiday weekends. We stroll by, shout “good morning” to them with a smile on our face. We’ve observed the “quiet” rules, turning our fan on inside our camper so we don’t hear the drone that continues long after 11:00 PM on these weekends, after the illegal fireworks have frightened Rupert to the point of a near heart attack, leaving him in a pool of drool huddled beneath the table inside the camper, leaving me on the brink of another seizure, leaving us to wonder how much the rates here will be increased when someone loses a finger or two and the liability insurance rates go sky high. Those bright lights (much better when left to the professionals anyway) won’t seem so special then, I imagine.

This campground that we call home from May to October doesn’t have many bells and whistles. There’s not much for the kids to do here. That’s a common complaint. For us, it’s one of the reasons we stay here: we like it that there aren’t a ton of kids roaming around all the time. We’ve played that game. We love to have the grandkids come; we love to have them go home again. We’re here to watch the trees grow, watch the lake change as the wind switches direction, listen to the birds call to one another, chuckle at the chipmunks scampering across the camper deck, enjoy the sunrise and the sunset. We want the peace and quiet. We’ll relinquish it to those who crave the party atmosphere of the holiday weekends, yet we’ll never understand why they put themselves through all that. They’d feel so much better if they’d drink less, take a nice morning walk with their dogs and children, or sit quietly and look around them, enjoy these beautiful woods without making all that useless noise. Don’t they get enough of that at their jobs or in their homes?