This is Digby Pancake. If there is one thing about camping that I know, it is really dirty.
The campsites are dirty. The roads are dirty. The trails are dirty. And even the showers which are supposed to get you clean if you are a person are dirty. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Neither does getting caught in a shower in the dark…like Girl Person.
We’ve been to a lot of campgrounds. The persons have complained about a lot of bathrooms and facilities. My answer would be to stay dirty. I guess that’s why they call me Dirty Digby sometimes. Maybe.
But if you have to go thru what Girl Person did the other night, I would reckon that my viewpoint might be more appreciated about not taking a shower.
There she was. In the campground shower. Now, the persons are a lot more careful lately not to touch anything. Especially not in a shower.
So Girl Person was moving pretty slow and careful. Don’t touch the walls. Keep your shower shoes on. Don’t let your towel touch the wall. I could go on and on.
When you’ve started your shower too late and it’s already dark outside, you may not notice that the lights in said bathroom are on a timer.
You might take notice however of the creepy fake flowers in the corner and wonder, wonder out loud, who would put fake flowers in a park bathroom. Why are they dusty? Why are they here? Why are they grossing me out? You might wonder that.
So as Girl Person went to take her shower, she tried to think of happy things. A bathtub with bubbles. A melody of classical music and wine. Real flowers and not fake flowers. Oh, she tried.
Her diversion techniques may have been working. Until….you guessed it…the lights went out.
Well, at first she just said, “seriously?” And she waited. Would the lights come back on? She hadn’t heard the door open. She didn’t want to panic. But she couldn’t see her feet to be able to run.
She couldn’t see her hands in front of her face. And she hadn’t taken any notice of her path into the shower. How would she get out? What was the way out? How was she going to do this without touching anything? This seemed impossible.
So she did what anyone would do in this situation. She thought of what her mom would do. Scream? Yep. But she couldn’t do that. She was stronger than this. So she started singing.
“Don’t freak out and you won’t freak out.” This made no sense and that made sense to her. Because if it didn’t make sense, that would mean this situation was ridiculous and therefore less scary. That’s what she needed.
She decided that in order not to touch anything, she would have to sing loud and let her voice bounce off the walls to lead her out of there. So with every step, the singing became louder. And louder. And louder. “Don’t freak out and you won’t freak out! DON’T FREAK OUT AND YOU WON’T FREAK OUT!!” She knew if someone heard her they would actually freak out. That didn’t seem like such a bad thing if there was someone in there, actually.
You would have thought that by the time she knew she was near the door, she would have been elated. Ecstatic! Overjoyed! But all she could think about was those fake flowers. Where were they? She could not touch them. No, no, no! This would have been the end of Girl Person as we knew it.
So with one last step, the step of all steps, she took a deep breath, but not too deep (the Virus Monster)…and she took one last reach…would she reach the door or the flowers? This was it.
As she felt the touch of cool metal, she knew. She had made it! But her song had to be sung one last time, because as she turned on the lights, those flowers stared at her like no other. Today was her lucky day. But they wouldn’t guarantee another.
“Don’t freak out and you won’t freak out!”
Will the persons ever get used to the prison showers at camps? More than likely not. But what pushes us outside of our comfort limit can make us grow. Unless you’re a fake flower.
–Digby Pancake
