I don’t have room to relate all my experiences in this arena but a few examples should suffice. In the beginning all started smoothly enough. Not that my daughter was happy to be removed from the comfort and fellowship of her friends but I expected that to change as we got to know one another again during the trip. Except for a few minor glitches which I’ll ignore in this account we finally made it in our rented van to a county campground in eastern Washington where we pitched our tent and settled in for the night.

As soon as the tent was pitched and the van unloaded the first complaints from my daughter rolled in, “Where are the plugins?”

“Plugins? What the hell are plugins and why do you need them?”

I received a pitying look as she replied in tones suitable for instructing a small child,”I need someplace to plug in my hair dryer after washing my hair.”

“Washing your hair?” I said while digesting this bit of information.

“We’re camping,” I reasonably pointed out. “Plugins aren’t available while camping”, I continued and then patiently explained that not all of civilization’s amenities are available in the wilderness and that was part of the fun. We’re going to connect with nature and ourselves. It would be a trip of discovery. She would just have to wait before washing her hair.

“Mom,” wailed my daughter running to my wife. I’m not sure exactly what my wife told her but the two of them conspired together for awhile before commandeering the five gallon water jug we carried in the van for emergencies and setting off.

I must say that teenagers are hardier than I realized. The water in that campground was ice cold. My wife poured that ice cold water in the jug over my daughter’s head repeatably while she washed her hair and my daughter showed no ill effects whatsoever. They even found some plugins! Being a country campground it had restrooms with electrical outlets resulting in some measure of civility being restored between my daughter and me. And not just civility but her attitude toward me bordered on downright smugness.

The reason soon became apparent. My wife told me she’d met a boy while washing her hair. I was later grandly informed by my daughter that he wasn’t just any boy but a college man and they agreed to write to each other.

Pages:
«« previous page 1 2 3 next page »»

Tags: family, Humor

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 11:19 am and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

this article with others.