camping, and not camping

I went camping in someone's backyard in Michigan. I'm not sure who came with me, but she'd never been to Michigan before. It was a terrible night. There was heavy rain, and lightning, and crocodiles crawling around in the tree branches. A couple of deer wandered into the backyard, and I pointed them out to my friend. She was impressed.

But then the night got even worse. Something attacked the deer---it was pretty dark, but in the brief bursts of light from the lightning I made out lions, cheetahs, water buffalo. The deer stood over us protectively. Blood gushed from their flanks. They didn't speak, but I could tell they wanted us to get the hell out of there and save ourselves. So we did. I mean, the house was only about ten feet away, so we went back inside and waited out the storm.

Once it stopped raining, my parents took us to crash someone else's family reunion. We stood in line next on the Wattles I-75 overpass. The people in front of us were taking way too long to hand over their tickets, so we jumped the line and hopped over the turnstiles. This was an unusually rebellious move for my family.

The other family's reunion was pretty lame. I milled about with my mom and dad and brother and unidentified friend. I wanted my mom to play Skee-Ball with me, but I couldn't remember what the game was called, and it didn't seem like they had it there anyway. My mom did find a tub full of pool balls. It looked like those pits of rainbow-colored plastic balls they used to have in the play areas at McDonald's, although trying to jump in it would probably have been pretty painful. We wisely decided not to try. Our rebellious phase was over.