With friends like these….
So I was talking to a few friends a couple days ago about camping. Which reminded me of a wonderful story that has not scarred me (for several reasons) for life?
Summer of 1995, I was just out of my sophomore year of high school and me and my two best friends, Brian and Todd, decided to go camping. We usually hit up a little island that you can walk across to on a sandbar and the water usually doesn’t get to your crotch. But this year the reservoir was up pretty high so we decided to go to a campsite on the main land. We were pretty much the only people camping, which isn’t surprising since it was like 105 degrees outside.
So we arrive and set up the tent, go for a swim, collect firewood (because it wasn’t hot enough already!) All the normal shit that you would do while camping. While we were collecting wood I noticed that the Mayflies were out. They aren’t like normal black flies, these were like little butterflies, they only live a week or so, and supposed to be good bait for fish. These mayflies are in huge swarms, they just hang on leafy trees near water, so if you walk by they just launch off the tree and you’re getting swarmed by them. I learned of this swarming attack when I walked around a bend on the lake and BOOM I was being pelted by fucking bugs! Creepy. So about an hour later we’re all back from collecting wood and shit. I tell Todd “hey, there is a dead duck around the bend, looks like a bobcat or something got it” so Todd, being equipped with testicles, wants to see this dead duck. This bobcat attacked dead duck. He goes jogging the 100 feet or so and BOOM the mayflies are all over him, and he’s flailing his arms and screaming like a little bitch. Both Todd and I hate spiders, and these things kind of looked like flying spiders. Flying spiders would pretty much be the worst thing in the world! Brian and I laughed and Todd called me a fag or something.
Later, closer to dusk, we walked over to the “mineral spring” to refill our water bottles. We’re pretty much walking parallel to the shore line which is maybe 100 yards away; we can see water through the trees. We have our flashlights with us and we start noticing its getting dark, fast. So we decide that instead of walking along the windy road we can just cut through the trees real quick and walk on the shore where there will be a bit more light. Great plan, perfect plan, what could go wrong? SPIDERS!
We were about a quarter of the way through the trees when we finally cut on our flashlights….and we all froze. All we could see were spiders, everywhere. I cannot write the enormity of these spiders. Fat chicken nuggets with legs! And there were LITERALLY thousands upon thousands of them. Where were they before? How did they make webs so fast? We were screwed! Now there are three seventeen year olds huddled together in what is clearly going to be a slaughter. We frantically searched for sticks to fight our way out of this web of death. There were spiders between every tree. Words cannot illustrate how many spiders there were. It took us at least 90 minutes to go 70yards. And we were constantly “feeling” things on us. Just getting that creepy crawly feeling you get when you’re looking at a big spider. And the fact that one of us would just reach over and touch someone else’s ear; rendering that person into a screaming, dancing banshee, didn’t help.
So after we hacked our way out of the death woods we headed back to the campsite for some hot dogs and marshmallows. (Now earlier in the day I straightened out clothes hangers to use in the cooking of dogs and marshmallows. What I didn’t know is that while Brian was chopping up some wood he dropped the axe onto my clothes hanger, putting a kink into the medal, where it would bend.) So Brian and Todd are cooking up their hot dogs and I’m going in for a marshmallow. My preferred method is to catch the marshmallow on fire, bring it to my mouth and blow it out. Then I just peel that crispy burnt outside layer off and eat it. Delicious! I was not aware of the kink in my clothes hanger. So as my flaming marshmallow is coming in for me to blow it out, *kink* and the flaming death mallow smashes into my nose. And at that point all that both Todd and Brian could see were my feet sticking up behind the log I was sitting on. I went straight back! We had tears in our eyes when I recovered and sat back up. Brian and Todd from laughing, me from the 2nd degree burn I had on the side of my nose! When I went to wipe the extinguished mallow from my nose, 2 layers of skin came with it, just sloughed off onto my hand. Very gross!
At that point, Brian mentioned that he dropped the axe on my clothes hanger. With friends like these….
