Box Elder Bugs and the Honey Crisp

Every year, right on time, they come out from their nests with a vengeance. Hundreds, thousands, swarms and swarms of beady, red little eyes and poking, prodding, peeking antennae, up over porches, plastering across the window panes, lining every door and crevice of every house across the entire state of Minnesota, they fly, perch, crawl, creep, zoom slowly and ominously around you as you try to make your way out of the house. Their red and black wings spread straight out, their bodies vertical much like a lightning bug, and they hover and circle and dip and dive, and when they land they scuttle and scuttle and scuttle. They’re everywhere. You can’t escape them. The lawn is blanketed with their babies, little red dots with six, tiny legs. They like buildings to hibernate in, so they flock to the sides of them, and they wait for the opportune moment when an innocent human comes walking out of their door to then take flight and find their way into your home. That is of course after they’ve landed in your hair, on your shoulder, on both your arms, on your face, and all over your body first. I HATE BOX ELDER BUGS.

It wasn’t always this way. I’d find one in “my room” at work, and I would safely pick it up and set it free outside. I’ve always been a bit of nature freak when it comes to respecting life of all shapes and forms and sizes. For example, I have a hard time killing ants because I know all too well how useful they are to our environment, and to me an infestation of ants is nothing but nature’s efficient clean up crew. Spiders, the same thing. They creep me out, oh sure, but I respect their existence. It is very rare to see me squish a bug, an insect, arachnid, a life of any kind. My only exceptions to this rule in the past have been mosquitoes, flies, and ticks. And, well, for good reason. I still haven’t figured out the purpose to any of their existences. But my list ended there.

The box elders didn’t always used to be this…abundant. It started only a few years ago, and to this day I can’t scientifically explain why their nests just keep getting bigger and bigger every year since, or, how it even started in the first place. All I know is that every year, autumn sets herself in, and the box elders suddenly emerge by the millions. Having a bedroom in the basement doesn’t help, let me tell you. I’m swatting at box elders all the way through Christmas and Valentine’s. Yes, swatting. Box elders are now on my “TO DIE” list. After getting attacked by hundreds of them every time I open the back porch door, I think I can safely assume that their chance of species survival is pretty damn good, and killing about fifty of them a day won’t be that detrimental to the environment. There’s still millions of them covering the pool shed out back.

Food. They must be food for the birds before the winter, right? That’s got to be their purpose…. But it’s not. No. You may not be familiar with the term “box elder bug”, but are you familiar with the term “stink bug”? Oh yes. These are stink bugs by the thousands, millions. Kill one with your bare hands? Your finger will stink for three days. This is also a reason they are not eaten.

I love autumn. I do. But these harmless little vermin are killjoys for the great equinox that so desperately wants to be celebrated. I can’t celebrate you, Autumn. Not when you send us millions of stupid little bugs that stink and zoom at you like little air raids from nature’s hell pit. Seriously. I’m wanting to crawl into a giant tripod ship with an exterminating gun and pulverize the crap out of their existence. Now, coming from a nature lover such as myself, this is truly saying something.

But as my mother wisely said to me as I was having a ridiculous fit about seeing twenty of them on the inside of the screen porch door, “They’re just bugs…”. This is true, I say to myself. They are just bugs. And they’re harmless. They don’t bite. They don’t eat your house. They can kill trees, though, but other than that they prove no real threat. They’re the most unprotected, easy-to-kill bug I’ve ever squashed, oozing guts with one, feeble swat. This is a positive thing. They’re not like ticks where you have to literally rip all their legs off and use your nail to tear their thick, invincible skin apart, and then, to be safe, flush them down a toilet. They’re not like mosquitoes where even though they fly ever so slowly they seem to have this annoying knack of always escaping your seemingly quick hand. No. Box elders are wimps. They’re soft, slow, unafraid of people, and really easy to kill. And all I want to do is KILL, KILL, KILL.

This new violent nature frightens me slightly. I have decided that I need to counteract this malicious behavior and attitude by trying to find a more positive thing about Minnesota autumns. I was recently informed that the honey crisp apple is Minnesota’s state fruit. Have you ever eaten a honey crisp apple? They are, literally, to die for. And here’s the kicker, Folks: I hate fruit. I’ll eat an apple maybe once a year. I’ve forced myself to eat bananas when I’m having digestive issues. Every five years or so I’ll get a fluke craving for a slice of orange, but that’s usually from a weird body chemical imbalance thing because usually oranges make me gag. Grapes? I haven’t eaten a grape in six years. Plums I can handle on occasion. Peaches, pears, pineapple, any kind of berry (unless it’s blueberries in muffin form), mango, cantaloupe, grapefruit, all of it makes me want to gag when I put it in my mouth. I’ve always hated this about my taste buds, too, because fruit is so pretty, colorful, alluring, natural, and nothing makes me think Garden of Eden more than fruit trees and berry bushes. I love to write about fruit, write about characters eating it, because it’s such a universally enjoyed pleasure, a healthy indulgence, a communion with our planet, our roots, our existence as we know it. I envy the fruit lovers. I envy the communion with earth that I feel I am sorely missing out on.

But alas, Reader. Alas! Minnesota has come to offer something I never thought possible. I have discovered a fruit that I love to eat, a fruit that I can indulge in, a fruit that grows from a tree in an orchard of fire-blazing heavenly golden leaves a flutter, all an ode to an Eden that no longer exists. I, Reader, have fallen in love with the honey crisp apple. Even the name of it sounds luscious! It’s the perfect apple. It’s sweet, with just a slight hint of apple tartness. It’s juicy. It’s not soft like the Cortland apple. Yes, the Cortland apple. My hometown’s apple. My New York hometown’s apple. I hate the Cortland apple. You can buy Cortland apples in just about every state of the country, and they all come from an orchard in the upstate New York hills that I have been to many times in my childhood. It was the same, cheap field trip every year. We got to watch cider being made. This was not as fascinating to me as it was to others. Squished up apples in a giant press looks like vomit to me. The smell was always nice, but the squished up apples was revolting. I never liked the taste of cider, either. The smell, I’ll say again, is nice. Nostalgic. The cliché but ever comforting smell of autumn. After the cider tasting on this annual field trip, we would buy a few Cortland apples with the money our mothers gave us to spend, and I would never eat them. They’re small, soft, and tart. No thanks.

But the honey crisp! It is not soft. It is, as it proclaims in its name, crisp. So crisp! Juicy…sweet…a communion with our planet that I can now fully enjoy. Stink bugs be damned. I’ve got myself an apple to eat.

PART FIVE of: "Gomorrah", Wisconsin

I feel like I need to make up for PART FOUR. PART THREE was a bit of a hit. PART FOUR was rushed and wound up like a sloppy cross-stitch. Or a half done pancake. Or? Like a wedding dress made without a pattern… No. Here it is: It was more like an anti-climatic, run-on to nowhere sequence of things that were not properly described. I let you down, Reader. I left you on the edge of your seat in PART THREE, and I completely failed to satisfy in the following post. Believe me, I realized this the moment I posted it. It was late at night. My judgment was based on this factor alone: “I’m too lazy to fix this.” But my laziness was temporary, and I’ve come through with a full recovery, and I promise that the tale I’m telling has a great ending. Not a good ending. A great ending. I recklessly guarantee your satisfaction. PART FIVE is going to make up for my previous bout of “I’m too tired to write or care about writing” spell. This is the part of the story I’ve been waiting to tell you. It's going to get a little bit tricky because in the first half of it I have to tell it third person. Or is it second person? Definitely not first person. I was curled up in my stupid car trying to sleep when the real excitement began. The first half of this post was recounted to me by my friend, and now I’m going to try to do her story telling justice by relaying it in my own words to you. So, if some of it comes off a little first person, I apologize for it. If some of my embellishments seem dishonest, I’m sorry. My imagination can put myself directly into a story that I wasn’t even a part of, and who knows what’s going to come from that… But I promise, Reader, that this part of the tale definitely makes your loyalty to read my adventures all worth it.

It seemed to be that by 4am the baboons finally passed out. It was quiet for a total of thirty minutes before a staggering, lose headed baboon suddenly made his presence known to the cold, early, dark morning air. His voice rang out with a, “Who the F is in my mother F-ing tent!” (Now here I can say that I will be censoring the language, but I’m sure you’ll get the picture...)

My friend attested to the fact that she could hear his voice right next to our campsite and could safely assume it was most definitely one of our primate neighbors. Through listening only, these were some facts that were picked up from the Lose-Headed baboon and his friends that were trying to get him to shut up and go to bed:

They had apparently been bar hoping, had been drinking and driving for quite some time before realizing that there was a shuttle service to the campsite. The Lose-Headed baboon’s name was being said as, “Riser”. One of his friend’s was “Sievert” and the other, “Digger”. I am not making this up. Riser, Sievert and Digger. Obviously, last names (though "Digger" is questionable...). But come on… Riser? Digger? It’s just too perfect.

Riser continued to obsess about the fact that his bag was sitting outside of his tent. To be fair, it had stormed, so it was most likely waterlogged to the hilt, and even being sober that would tick anyone off. But the truth of the matter was this: no one heard him open the tent and even look inside of it, so there was no real proof that anyone was in there, no one to have taken his bag out of the tent and put it in the rain. His rant went on like this:

“Is this my F-ing bag?" (He's not even sure it's his?) "Who put my F-ing bag outside my tent! Get out of my F-ing tent!” He said these phrases over and over and over and over again, at the top of his lungs mind you, in a I’m-so-drunk-I-can’t-think-past-the-phrases-I’ve-already-said-so-I-keep-saying-them-like-a-broken-record sort of way. Those of you who’ve partied with some heavy drinkers (or have alcoholics in your family), you know exactly what I’m talking about. There is something about alcoholic brain damage that sets your brain on “repeat”, and listening to someone suffering through this tragic phase of wastedness is, well, kind of annoying. Even when I’ve been drinking myself these sort of drunks annoy me. I’m glad I wasn’t there for it, truth be told, because I’ve had my fair share of experiences with the drunk stuck on “repeat”, thank you very much.

And then, the ultimate moment of climactic hilarity. My friend attests to this being “the quote of the night”:

“On a scale of one to ten, I am so F-ing angry I’m going to start cutting off people’s head with an F-ing machete!”

My friend says to her husband, “That must be a fifteen.” And her quote makes the joke complete.

Sievert was in another tent laughing at his friend and suggesting every once and awhile, “Dude, you probably just didn’t put your bag in your tent.” This outraged Riser and gave need to put his friend in his place with: “Sievert? You are so F-ing stupid that you left your F-ing bag in your F-ing Acura in F-ing Bloomington!”

Sievert shut up for awhile.

Raging Riser finally decided that he was going to go to jail.

“Someone take me to jail! Because I’m gonna start cutting off people’s heads with a machete! I’m going to jail! I’m going to kill people!”

(As funny as all of this was, let’s face it, this would’ve been the opportune time to call the cops…)

Riser suddenly realizes that Sievert’s keys are in his pocket. Victory! He very triumphantly exclaims, “So! When I go to jail you’re [Sievert] going to be so F-ing screwed because I have your F-ing keys!” I imagine a bulbous headed villian with short little legs cackling with a "Muhahahaaa!" while violently and passionatly dangling the keys with evil triumphant mirth...

I’m not sure if it was Digger or if Sievert decided to gain courage to keep at it, but for story-telling sake I’ll just make the executive decision by saying it was Digger (give him a little stage time) who said, “Just to go to bed, Dude…just go to bed!”

“No!” cries Raging Riser. “I can’t go to bed because there’s F-ing people in my tent!” He then proceeds onto, “When I find out who put my F-ing bag outside my F-ing tent I’m going to cut off their F-ing head with an F-ing machete!”

My friend said, “He kept to the machete theme all night. He never cut loose from it.” (No pun intended).

This all eventually dwindled and ended. No one knows if Riser ever made it into his own tent or not, or if there were people inside of it at all. Sunrise eventually dawned. The birds came out ( I think…). My friend woke up to the sound of civil, sober voices having a descent, normal conversation about sports. She listened for a time before coming to the conclusion that, “maybe they’re not the jerks we thought they were now that they’re sober…”. She came out of the tent with great hopes to find that the civil, sober voices talking about sports were not the baboons at all, but our two other friends that came with us.

“My hopes for their [baboons] lives were diminished,” she said.

And then she ended the story with a slow joking nod and said:

“So. I guess the real question is – Who did put Riser’s bag outside of his tent?”

I woke up to the boom-booming of the bass around 9am. Honestly, I was grateful that I had been able to sleep in until 9am. I was okay with the boom-booming, but was wondering what would happen now when we gathered at our picnic table that was (thanks a lot to the ridiculous before mentioned campsite set up) directly next to the baboons’ picnic table. Would they have breakfast there? Their breakfast turned out to be more vodka. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if they hadn’t then packed up all of their stuff and drove off after having that breakfast.

The night was definitely a blessing in disguise, Fate throwing me a bone. I remember telling my friend through the whole trip, “I can’t wait to write about this…”. However, I’m now going to have to do a very ugly deed before wrapping this up entirely with a more deep studded, glimpse-into-my-personal-life ending. I am now going to share my nitty-gritty complaints of the Apple River Hideaway, and it’s going to feel good. And from there, I’m going to post my complaints on every forum and travel review site I can get my teeny little hands on, and I’m going to sabotage this business wickedly with my finger tips, keyboard, and my faith in the power of the written word.

Why? You ask. It wasn’t that bad… I mean, come on. So what? Bad service. People don’t go there for the service. They go there to party. I completely understand this. However… the safety of myself as well as my company was compromised and I’m not okay about it.

Let’s begin with the bad service (just to give extra support to my case):

1) We were asked if we wanted a campsite around people or away from people, and when asked politely to be away from people, we were put next to the volleyball court smack dab in the middle of Main Street, Sin City.

II) When politely denying the need to spend an extra $5 on a cooler tube, we were told quite rudely that we were boring people. This is not satisfactory, and I’m not afraid to say it.

C) After clearly explaining a disturbance to a group of four Staff who were drinking on the job, they blew us off and never came to deal with the situation. They had disappeared entirely. After two phone calls later, one of which was rewarded with nothing but blatant insolence, they still did not come to rectify a situation that could have become far worse had any of us chosen to take any sort of matter into our own hands. Apple River Hideaway is lucky to have had this happen to five people who were sober enough to try to do the right thing.

This is my problem:

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I say about it, the argument will forever be, “Hey, if you knew it was Gomorrah, you shouldn’t have walked through the city gates.” There is truth to this. There is. But allow me to remind everyone that this was not a private party we walked into. This was not someone’s house we crashed. This was not a concert filled with security guards turning the other way at the light-up of a joint. This was a public place, a business that here in America should be following the rules that all other businesses have to follow to keep people safe. Your staff should not be drinking on the job, especially when you know that 99% of your customers are partying like it’s a free-for-all. Here’s an interesting story I’m going to use to make my point that much more clear:

A friend of mine went to a concert/festival, a similar (identical) environment, and was almost forced off the premises because she tried to climb a fence (rather intoxicated) and fell off of it (yes, this is funny). She wasn’t hurting anyone, she wasn’t harassing anyone or causing a disturbance, but a security guard (who was not drinking on the job) had told her that if she didn’t go back to her tent she would be made to leave. So explain to me: is it really too much to ask that if you’re going to foster an environment of hard core partying, you should at least have a semi tight clasp on the security? I’m not asking for much. Really. I’m not. I’d just like to know that if I’m going to pay money for a service, to enjoy a night of camping and a day of tubing down a river, that, can I just say twice: THAT I PAID FOR, to be able to count on the employees running the joint to come to my rescue when some goat-headed, under-aged drinking, pit-brained imbeciles are ruining my paid-for experience with disturbance and harassment. The fact that we were not treated as paying customers enrages me. Should I throw out the "D" word? Discrimination? That should get someone's attention, right? Maybe I’m being a little over the top. Maybe I should just let it go. But I can’t. And here’s the ultimate reason why:

What if I was in a more dangerous situation? What about that random guy that tapped on my window? I could’ve been some naïve, ignorant, under-aged woman that thought he was being nice and took him up on his offer only to be hauled off and raped. What if I was being sexually harassed by the baboons? Technically, with the name-calling and the things they were saying after F’s husband and I headed off to talk to the moronic drinking staff, we had been sexually harassed. If I wanted to go an extra leg with this, I can safely say it would’ve been permissible in the court of law. Especially, let’s not forget, the obviousness of the baboons being under-aged. We should have called the cops… We truly should have. Then it would’ve been on record that the staff was drinking, and that the Apple River Hideaway would’ve been responsible for having under-aged drinkers on their property who were causing a disturbance and were never dealt with by the staff, who, let me mention it again: were DRINKING ALCOHOL ON THE JOB. It also would’ve been on record that paying customers made an attempt to rectify this disturbance and nobody did anything to help us because they were, again, DRINKING ON THE JOB. It would’ve been a more satisfying means of justice. I’m all about the justice (in case you hadn’t picked up on that….). And apparently I like to repeat things too (sober no less), to you know, make a point of course...

So, this is the best I can do for justice: I’ve copied and pasted a few excerpts from the Apple River Valley Hideaway website to show you that I’m not so wrong in having the expectations I demand.


(If you go to the website, click on the CAMPING tab, and page down a long way before getting to the rules)

• Quiet time is 10 p.m. Please turn off your music and keep noise to a minimum at this time.
• WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO MODIFY THE RULES
AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE!
WE DO NOT RECOMMEND BRINGING CHILDERN ON WEEKENDS, BUT THEY ARE WELCOME WEEKDAYS.

Kegs, beer bongs, glass containers containing alcohol and fireworks are not allowed; they will be confiscated.

No speakers outside of cars, PA systems or DJs are allowed - you will be asked to leave.


So. Turns out I was wrong about quiet time being 11pm. It’s actually earlier. And they ask people to turn off their music… And if you’re not allowed to bring speakers and PA systems and DJ’s, and will be asked to leave, is it really okay to be blasting club music at 2:30 in the morning from your vehicle? They’ve reserved the right to modify the rules at any time… Does this mean that if any of these rules are broken and their moronic, drinking-on-the-job staffers aren’t responsible for anything that happens on the property because, Hey. We get to change the rules to cover our asses. HOW VERY EFFING CONVENIENT.

Okay. Wrap this up, Miss Dawn… Wrap it up.

When the calm of Sunday came as the cars packed up and drove away, we were left at our picnic table with a much needed solitude. My friend’s husband said, “I really don’t want to go tubing again…” I was so unbelievably relieved! I promptly said, “Me neither.” And neither did anyone else. It was time for us to pack ourselves up and go home.

As I was rolling up my little pup tent that I never got to sleep in, the folks next to us were playing early 1900’s bluegrass on a portable stereo, or as us Generation Xers like to call a “boom box”. I sighed looking over at their parked, refurbished Model T and thought, “Now this, is nice.” Call me “old fashioned”. Call me “old”. Call me “grandma” for all I care, but in this moment I was thinking, “This, is nice.” And I smiled.

As I was watching my friends pack up their own stuff, I was psycho-analyzing myself and my reaction to the baboon in the SUV. I was psycho-analyzing myself about everything, really, like my Anger Management that I felt I clearly needed, but I was most concerned with the rage I felt toward Blue Bandana. It felt, personal. I really had it in for him specifically. And then? I remembered… I remembered things that I have tried to shove into the Black Cave of my memory. I knew there was something very familiar about the whole scene, about waking up in the middle of the night to booming music and having to deal with someone who was so drunk it made you want to hurt them for it…

It is a chief reason I had to move back to Minnesota in the first place, three years ago. I was stuck in a bad situation, living with a loved one who was a raging alcoholic. On top of this misery, someone I loved had died of brain cancer, I was working three jobs I hated, was poorer than I’ve ever been in my adult life, and was fed up with trying to move forward in any direction at all. But the person I lived with was my greatest cause of depression that year, and didn't fully realize how much until 25 pounds of weight gain later... Not to mention the fact that I abhored my life.

Those eyes I saw in Blue Bandana were the same eyes I’d seen a thousand times before. 'Waking up every single night to the sound of a stereo system shaking the house to pieces because he-who-shall-not-be-named would pass out in front of his television, so drunk that not even the blaring of his own stereo system directly into his face would wake him up. Every night. For months and months and months. Fights ensued over the matter. Things were thrown. Things were shouted. Nothing ever changed. This was only one of the torments from my roommate, one of the more stupid ones, and to spare him a little I won’t tell you everything (he is, in fact, getting his life together for the time being…), but this was definitely a deep rooted, unearthed grave of emotion that literally came back from the dead to torture me, to make me realize that in truth, I’m still angry. I still cannot tolerate it. 'Not even from stupid strangers. Those eyes… so selfish, blank, and possessed by some dark force in the form of nothing more than a shelf full of empty bottles. Addicts destroy families. Don’t be one, okay? That’s my advice for the day. Pass it on. Ga med den. Kwenda na ni. Andare con esso. Ale avek li. Aller avec elle. GO WITH IT. It means, go with it.

On the way home we crossed the river into the little town of Stillwater, Minnesota. I remember thinking on the way in (before our crazy adventure), “I’d love to check out this cute, little town!” Little did I know, my company in their car ahead of me was saying the same thing. So, on the way back I decided to grab a few snapshots of Stillwater saying to myself, “This would’ve been nice for my blog, too… We should’ve just stopped here instead.” But then I gave that idea a second thought and said, “Nah. Let’s be honest. I have a helluva story to tell when I get back home.”

The End

PART FOUR of "Gomorrah", Wisconsin - Apple River Hideaway

Now. This is the part of the tale that’s a little bit fuzzy to me. I remember everything, but I don’t remember the order of events very clearly. I think that had to do with both my medication and the amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins. This is what I do remember:

I remember feeling relieved that we had told the Apple River Hideaway staff, but wasn’t naïve enough to expect much from them. I remember coming back from the bathroom… And here is where I don’t remember the order of events very clearly. Maybe I will as I write them out…

My friend was out of the tent. She reported that she had dialed 411 to be connected to the Apple River Hideaway directly. Now, before I tell you how the conversation went I need to tell you about what happened after me and F’s husband went to the bathroom. My friend didn’t know that we had walked off, and was still in the tent listening. She heard the baboons calling her husband all sorts of names, such as “faggot” et cetera. She was in a right rage about it, justifiably, and came out of the tent to find that we weren’t there for the harassment. This was the moment she chose to make the phone call.

“Yeah, hi. Can you do something about these a-holes next to our campsite? They won’t turn their fricken music down and-”

Note: I’m not censoring her swear words. These were her words, exactly. But she wasn’t able to get to the “faggot” part because the woman on the other end cut her off and said in a very holier than thou, snotty attitude, “Do you think you can talk to me without using all the swear words?”

This is irony in it’s most fittest form. My God-fearing friend who even in her utmost rage is doing everything she can to avoid using profanity to the owner of a campsite who invites just about all the seven deadly sins to manifest themselves upon her river’s shore. This phone call proved futile.

F’s husband then made a phone call… And here is where I don’t remember the order of things… I’m not sure who made the phone calls first… It’s not that important, but I like to keep to the facts best I can. I think he made his call second to hers… Regardless, this one was just as futile. He was connected (I think….) to one of the four staff guys that we had talked to up by the bathrooms. This is what the Drunk Staff Moron said:

“Oh, that volley ball court? I thought you meant the other one…”

To paint you a picture, Reader? The other volley ball court was so far down the shoreline that you couldn’t even see it in daylight. Not to mention the fact that it was in the complete opposite direction of our campsite, of the place we had emerged from in full view under the lights of the registration area. Also, let’s not forget the important fact that we had pointed directly to the area to which we came from. Oh, and let’s not forget the most important fact: you could HEAR the damn, cliché club music pounding through the air only a few strides away. Really? Really. ‘Paying homage to a little Arrested Development: COME ON!

After the futile phone calls and deciding to take advantage of the currently quiet air, we tried to go back to sleep. The minute I found myself in my sleeping bag again, the music was cranked back up. I can’t remember why it was down in the first place (maybe they were just switching CD’s), but I was beyond my head at this point. At first, I had intentions of doing something completely rash. I was going to do something violent to their baby-makers and it wasn’t going to be pretty. Little did they know that they had just messed with a little New York Sicilian, and I was going to make them regret it with horrible consequences. I was going to do it. I was. I had it all planned out. It was definitely pre-meditated. I don’t care what people say: you can still pre-meditate your actions when you’re temporarily insane. I? Had it all planned out.

But I thought about what might happen if I were do such a thing. So, maybe I wasn’t as temporarily insane as I believed… I thought, “I would be getting my friends into trouble too if I did this, and none of us know how many there are in their whole group anyway… Cops will get called… It would get ugly…”. But the music was making me go mad. I had to escape it. So I started to throw my things together, to pull on my socks, grumbling to myself, “I wish I had a crowbar…. Or even better, a magic wand… Then I could leviosa their asses right into the river…”. I practically ripped my tent as I whipped my zipper up and over. My friend heard the “zrrrrrip!” of my tent and very affectionately demanded I get back into it. I told her I wasn’t going to do anything, I was just going to go sleep in my car. Except, I think I may have shouted it at her… I think I may have said it loud and angry… I didn’t mean to. I was pissed off at the baboons. Definitely not her. But that’s what I said, and that’s what I did.

I threw my stuff into my car, my blanket that was beneath my sleeping bag, my sweatshirt pillow, my sack-purse that held all my stomach, anxiety, and poison ivy medication, and I slammed my door shut. I tried to sleep in the driver’s seat for like two seconds before realizing that position was just stupid. So I crawled over the seat into the back. I was cold. It was damp. I threw my blanket off of me, dug into my purse to find my keys (which was a challenge with all the pill bottles and tubes of ointment), turned on my car and blasted the heat. I could still hear the music, but it was far less irritating. However, when I put my head down onto my sweatshirt pillow I could feel the beat-beating of the bass. This, does not do me well. My senses are so damn sensitive. Even when I’m not trying to sleep, too much bass has a tendency to increase my anxiety and make me very uncomfortable.

I am NOT a freak… how dare you!

It’s not that abnormal for bass beats to make a person anxious. In fact, it’s rather common for people who have anxiety. I learned this while watching an educational science show on cable one time. I remember jumping to the edge of my seat and saying to the television, “No way! I’m not the only one!” Because, let’s face it, before I knew that others get anxiety from bass, I, too, thought I was a freak.

So, there I was, desperately trying to think of something else, anything else, to distract me from the bass. But when you’re trying to think, you’re not falling asleep.

I heard a tap-tapping on my window. I sat up, slightly alarmed and slightly out of it. I saw a man outside my window. I stared. It took me a minute to be one hundred per cent sure that I didn’t know him. I leaned into my driver’s side seat. I let the window come down just a crack enough to hear what he wanted to say, and just enough for me to say anything to him should I have to.

“Hey, do you not have a place to stay tonight? You need somewhere to sleep other than your car?”

Oh. It’s this guy. The guy that thinks he’s suave and clever but is completely transparent. My eyelids dropped half-way to express, “You made me sit up, for this?” I said, “Nope. I’m fine.” And pointedly closed the window. What did he think I was going to do? Bat my eye lashes, hop out of the car, and go to bed with him? On the other hand… With all the little Chipmunks in the park, I couldn’t blame him for expecting it.

The music had eventually gone away. Did the Hideaway Staff finally come to our rescue? I didn’t know. My car had eventually heated up, and it heated up enough to relax me completely. I finally fell asleep. But little did I know, I was missing out on some things, things that would be laughed about later, but for the time being were completely obnoxious…

PART THREE: "Gomorrah", Wisconsin - Apple River Hideaway

*I should've been putting Gomorrah in quotes, like this: "Gomorrah". For the Biblically illiterate, this was a Sin City that God destroyed in the Old Testament. There's no such thing as Gomorrah, Wisconsin. Happy reading!

Let’s see… where did I leave off…. Oh yes. The baboons next door were putting on a show. What I’m about to describe is both disturbing and side-splitting hilarious. It was a toss up between: Do I laugh at their primitiveness? Or should I be repulsed by it? We laughed, but with eyes wide open in horror at the same time.

I didn’t actually take a head count, but I believe there were four of them. They were playing your everyday, club- mix clichés. They already lost originality points for that one… It was also rather obvious that none of them were old enough to drink. In fact, I would place a bet that at least two of them were only seventeen or eighteen. But then again, people that act like apes are hard to gauge in terms of where they’re at in their maturity. But judging solely on the way they were dressed and the amount of hair they still had on their heads and the baby face pretty boys that they were, I think it’s safe to guess that they were under-aged. This fact (or fiction) point is only being made because this is relevant to a later part of the story. I’ve drank with under-aged people before (I won’t name names…). I’m not here to judge on the matter. But this was the leverage we should’ve used when we thought about calling the cops…

Anyway. I promised a graphic plus hilarious description of what they were doing while we were playing Mad Gab. Their tunes were pounding loud through their clearly expensive sound system (which is a waste when you don’t play proper music on it, can I just say?). The doors of the SUV were wide open. They perched themselves, feet on the bottom of the doorframe and hands gripping the top. Already, they were in monkey position. You know, when a baboon is up in a tree and his long arms and hands are gripped to the branch above him and his feet are gripped to the branch he’s standing on, and he shakes both the branches and screeches for what most of us believe to be for no reason other than to say, “I AM MALE. I WANT MATE.” This is what happened. But even worse. They were shaking the vehicle in their positions, up and down went the SUV. They were hooting and hollering. And here it is: they were humping the air as they did this. Like, graphically having imaginary sex and being really, really excited about it. Their lips were pursed in “oot” positions as they looked at each other side to side, humped the air, and “oot ooted” like apes. At least, that’s what my eyes saw. In truth, they were just yelling, “Wooooo!” and then really going at it with the humping. It became, like, the thing to do. They were all very proud of themselves. It was the most ludicrous, barbaric thing I’ve ever seen. What was humorous about it was the fact they clearly thought they were cool by doing this. I mean it. They thought they were the clever hit of the party. Kudos, boys. Kudos. How so very original and witty you are. You were definitely a hit. But not quite in the way you wanted to be. To me, you were the clear evidence that just maybe, not necessarily all of us, but clearly some forms of humans truly did evolve from apes. Your ancestors would be proud. Especially when a woman would walk by that you were attracted to, and you would refer to her as a “Vagina”. “Check out that Vagina!” And many more offensive variations of this vulgar, sexist, repulsive-to-the-core act of babooness. You want to get back on to the SUV again and have imaginary sex? Let me take a picture… If only I had. They had hopped off when I finally dug around for my camera. I would’ve posted it. I think it’s safe to say that their illiterate, un-evolved, passing as an evolved human just because they wear a stupid blue bandana around their head and shave their face, prime-time dysfunctional qualities that make good MTV reality entertainment, less-than-capable of being able to pick up a piece of reading material that doesn’t have boobs on the cover, raunchy, mindless, wasted breathing beings and shells without souls, their stupidity to not understand the word “asinine”, and their being the epitome of having a most ridiculous existence that nobody on the planet could possibly care about because they have nothing to offer to it other than being a delightfully fun description for a run-on-sentence addicted writer make it undeniably certain that they will never, ever in their lifetime read this or have any idea that it exists. So. In short, I think it would’ve been safe to post their pictures because there’s no way they would ever see them.

Now. That was a lot of hate compacted into just some stupid idiots humping the air listening to club music. My anger and vindictiveness derives from what happened later on that night.

Now, me and my company had a swell game of cards going on in the “master tent” that lasted until about midnight. It was good times, and it was really, honestly the best part of the evening. (It was NOT boring). Eleven o’ clock was when the Hideaway campsite requested “quiet time” begin. It didn’t settle down completely until about twelve thirty. No big deal. We expected that. I mean, come on. Party it up and have fun. That’s the way it is. In fact, I was a little impressed that the noise didn’t last longer. I had been worried that it would, that it wouldn't be quiet enough for me to sleep...

Here’s another embarrassing fun fact about me that I’m about to throw out to the public in the name of story telling: I’m pathetically a high maintenance sleeper. I don’t know when this happened to me, but it has happened. I used to be able to sleep on anything, anywhere, as long as I was warm enough. When I lived in Pittsburgh in my early twenties, I didn’t have a bed and slept on a make-shift pad of blankets on the floor for an entire year. I’ve fallen asleep on all sorts of lumpy, smelly, crooked, “what stain is that?” sort of couches in all sorts of environments, and I’ve slept under towels and on top of crusty, hard carpets of bachelor pads. I grew up falling asleep to the sound of bulldozers moving and beep-beeping from the lumber yard behind our house. I’ve lived in the city, I’ve endured the noises and the life of late night civilians. But a few years ago, insomnia became a growing problem. I’ve always had a bout of it now and again, but nothing as severe to what I’ve been dealing with in the last couple years. I now have a ridiculous ritual that I have to abide by to keep my body happy enough to sleep properly.

1) I have to stay out of my bedroom until about an hour before sleepy time. This tells my body that it’s now time to sleep.

2) I have to turn on my fan for the noise and the feeling of a breeze on my face (even in the winter under a giant pile of blankets).

3) I have to either watch an hour of TV, a movie, or read a book for an hour lying down until I get sleepy.

4) I have to turn on my “lullaby” music.

5) Then, here’s where it gets even more ridiculous: I have to lie on my back for awhile until that position is uncomfortable, and then I turn to my side to doze off. If I skip the lying on my back stage, I’m awake for hours. I’m not exaggerating. It might sound like I am. But I am not.

So.
Camping is completely out of my comfort zone. It never used to be, though, I can assure you. I grew up camping. I went camping a few times in my early twenties, and loved it just as much. I loved the smell of the tent. I loved listening to the crackling of the fire and the soft voices of the people who were still up. I loved curling up in my sleeping bag and feeling like a bear in a burrow. But now? It was going to be a challenge for me to fall asleep. However, at this moment in the still quiet air, my iPod at my side for soft music, I was feeling positive and hopeful. I had brought my own, cute little pup tent that I bought five years ago when I had recklessly planned on doing a back-packing trip that never happened. I had never slept in it and was so excited to. Sounds stupid, but I was really excited to sleep in it. I was hoping for that “bear in a burrow” feeling again that I used to be able to enjoy.

To aid my sleeping needs, I took two of my anti-anxiety pills. I usually only need a half to knock me out cold. Two puts me near into a coma. That’s what I wanted. So, I curled up in my state of the line expensive sleeping bag (that I had also bought for my back-packing trip that I never went on), had my nifty head lamplight (another smart purchase for the trip I never went on) strapped around my head, and began to jot down notes and random observations in my “Hating Minnesota” notebook. I didn’t write very much. The pills kicked in faster than anticipated. I also wasn’t quite in the mood to write. My tent was damp from the storm that had just passed through. I was impressed with its waterproof-ness, but my sleeping bag felt dewy, and I wasn’t quite comfortable. So I packed up the notebook that contains a jotted note in it that says, “Not a camper camper.” That’s all it says. Line two: “Not a camper camper”. I have absolutely no idea why I wrote this. Following this was a bunch of boring facts about prices and “registering took forever”. It wasn’t very detailed. I finally decided it was time to try to sleep. I had forgotten my pillow at home but said to myself, “You are the queen of make-shift and do-without luxury…or, at least you used to be…”. So, I folded up a spare sweatshirt, and it sufficed. Sort of. I couldn’t get warm. I was chilled from the dampness of the tent. My sleeping bag is supposed to be able to keep me alive in -20 degree weather. I was doubting that at this moment. I decided to watch the movie “Millions” on my iPod until I passed out. It sort of worked. It took about two hours of switching positions, wrapping myself up tighter here, tucking in this part there, and closing up this draft hole here before finally at 2:30am I was warm, comfortable, and was starting to drift off into dream. I was in that place where you’re technically still aware of your surroundings, but your thoughts are crossing over into dream… when It, happened. Out in the still, quiet air that had comforted me with hope in sleeping came the rupturing noise of booming club music, vibrating the earth with obnoxious bass, announcing to the world that the baboons had returned. My eyes flung open with alarm. Then, the rage pulsed. I was a dragon that had been wakened. I heard in the tent next to me my friend crying out, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” She was just as ticked off as I was.

It took me two seconds to decide what to do. I knew there was no way this music was going to end any time soon. I am not a person who hesitates to address a conflict. Not to mention the fact that I was in a right rage for having just found my sleep spot and was right on the verge of dozing off when this monstrosity decided to erupt at this most unfortunate cinematic moment. I sat up, adrenaline pumping. I whipped up that zipper on my teeny tiny door and crawled hands and knees out of my wee little pup tent, managed to slip on my flip flops and march over to that damn SUV. I walked right up to the window. The baboons were sitting in the two front seats. Blue Bandana guy was in the driver seat, the window to which I was now pounding on. He didn’t even look over. Granted, he was completely piss-drunk wasted. But dude. You seriously don’t see movement right next to your face? I pounded harder. Had I a crowbar in hand, it would not have been a pretty sight. Finally, he opened the door. I took it and swung it open. Blue Bandana didn’t even look at me. I had to scream at the top of my lungs to get them to hear me over the music. I said something to effect of, “Can you turn that down, please? People are trying to sleep. Show a little courtesy?” In a “Come on, Man!” sort of tone. Passenger Seat guy said, “Oh sure. No problem. Yeah, we’ll turn it down.” And because he was drunk I couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or if he was mocking me. He did turn it down, though. But I knew what was going to happen next. Apes are predictable. Scenarios such as these, are predictable. This is something that would go straight into a script. Or, in my case, straight into a blog.

Firstly, I should mention that my friend’s husband came out of their tent just as I was finished with my futile confrontation. He apologized for not getting out of their tent faster than me, and handling the situation. It was very chivalrous of him, and I was grateful. But I didn’t want him feeling like he had failed in that chivalry just because I beat him to the window. When I get angry, I move very quickly. ‘Surprising for a little tike my size, but adrenaline gives you super powers you never knew you had.

Now. What happened next as I was meeting my friend’s husband out in front of the tent? The music was turned back up, full blast. Of course it was. You knew this was coming, Reader. We all did. This time, my friend’s husband took the goat by the horns. He did the same as me. Pounded on the window. Nothing. This time, it took more effort. He had to open the door himself. Blue Bandana guy was ignoring us completely. The look on his face was nothing more to be described than soulless. I saw a spoiled rich frat brat who’s never had to fen for himself in his entire life. I saw a dumb little kid who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody in his life (even his own mother) other than himself. I saw a friendless, loveless, pathetic asshole who was so drunk that a puny little girl like myself could’ve beaten the crap out of him if I had wanted to take it to those measures. The look on that face… It was so dark. So mean. A bully throughout his whole life, no doubt. The kind of person that will never know that he’s on the bottom of the totem pole, not everyone else. Reader? I secretly hated him. I don’t know why my feelings were so vehement and full of such dark rage, but I hated him. I had not one cent of sympathy or compassion, or even pity! To spend on him. Rage was pumping those two pills right on out of my system. I wasn’t tired anymore.

Blue Bandana guy started to pull on the door, trying to slam it in my friend’s husband’s face, but he was too weak to do it. I think this was the moment I wanted to get violent. It was so rude. Even for someone who was as drunk as he was. It was so… RUDE. F’s husband finally let go of the door and it suddenly gave way, and it shut. It seemed to surprise Blue Bandana a little bit. He then attempted to lock the doors by starting with the back one. It took him a long time to do this, manually pushing down the locks. That, was a little bit funny. But I still hated him.

Now that I was up, I had to go to the bathroom. F’s husband offered to walk me there. Safety first! We saw a group of Apple River Hideaway staff in a group in front of the check-in area. We decided to tell them what was going on. Up close, we realized that they were drinking too. Swell. We told them our story. We pointed to the spot that we had just come from and said, “Over there by the volleyball court”. We pointed. Twice, if I’m remembering right. And, yo. They had to have seen where we came from… Right? How much of a moron do you have to be to not realize that that area over there to which I’m pointing to is where the disruptive idiots are. Am I right? I’m right.

It got worse, Reader. Everything got worse…