The Great Niche Adventure: Camping

English: campfire with potatoes עברית: מדורה בקומזיץ עם תפוחי אדמה (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's not that I don't like the outdoors.

I enjoy rainstorms, after all.

Waterfalls, woodland creatures, wildflowers are all great.

I'm really, really white, but I'm also kind of obsessive with sunblock, so that's not necessarily a problem.

And a really good day puts the weary muscles and mosquito bites out of my mind until after the fact.

And really, there's not much better than a really awesome bonfire (note to self: write about bonfires).

But I hate camping.

Now, there are reasons I hate camping that make total sense, but can be mitigated.

I was a Girl Scout, and some of the troops I was in had particularly bitchy girls. And this was at a particularly bitchy age, besides. So there were some nasty things happening. (Want stories? Ask in the comments.) By the time I had a troop of pretty awesome girls, we also had pretty weak leadership.

Add in some fun additional factors, like:

A family curse that states that, whenever we go camping or beach-going, it will rain or otherwise have terribly inappropriate weather.
Sneak-attack "lady issues" on the latrine.
A troop that made a big deal about "camp cooking", such that we basically spent the whole trip cooking, cleaning, swimming, and having a campfire. And I don't like swimming that much.
Introversion that I didn't have a name for, but which basically meant I would wander off to get some time to myself, then get in trouble for wandering off (note: they were right to punish me for wandering off alone without telling anyone, but trips like this need to better accommodate for introverts somehow)

And, again, that's not even counting middle-school girls being middle-school girls.

Chris wants to go camping. I dread the idea.

And I know, as an adult, it's completely different. You get to choose who you go with and where you go and what you do when you get there. You can drink. You can burn things, or use your pocketknife, with impunity (so long as you follow the rules of the campsite, of course). You have your own cellphone, so as long as there's a signal, you can wander off a little. You can eat out of cans, and if that's not a balanced meal, well, you can make yourself a salad when you get home.

Intellectually, I know that. But emotionally, I'm scared to death that, even if I go with people I know and trust, it can only end with them making fun of and disdaining me.

Because in my experience, that's the only thing there is to do when it rains at camp.