The following event happened on January 3rd, 2012: Texas
It’s a perfectly beautiful day toady with clear skies and a warm sun. The breeze is crisp and wintry without the bitterness that’s been floatin’ around in the campground the last couple of days. What’s with everybody? New Year’s Day we spent a relaxing evening drinking and shooting guns and watching football, when SG suddenly gets all needy and moody, which of course got her boyfriend all moody, which then caused him to get all sorts of bent out of shape when his daughter whined about him leaving her alone at the camp without a word to say he was leaving. Awkward silence followed the ensuing argument that lingered the rest of the evening.
Then Ryan shows up late last night, and I expected him to come out and come warm up and eat pork chops and corn bread and watch Futurama with us in the yurt, drink a beer and relax with us. Instead he holed himself up in the truck for half an hour, ignored all but my most insistent greetings, threw a hissy fit, stomped on his cigarettes, slammed the truck door shut, tromped into the popup without one single word, came back out a second later, asked us where we were sleeping (the van, of course, once we put the bed board back in, which takes seconds), then got in his truck, drove off and I haven’t seen him since.
The animosity I might be able to handle, but it’s this blatant, callous rudeness that I really can’t abide by. It’s driving both myself and John up the wall. Right now, we’re coping by hiding out at McDonalds in town, but if this keeps up, we are not going to Sherwood with these guys. This morning I had about half a mind to pack up the van, grab John and head straight on to Arizona whether we had jobs lined up or not.
*Sigh.* Y’know, about a week ago somebody around here asked us how we’d survived a whole year on the road without becoming jaded. Jaded? How? Well, now I can understand how we might become jaded pretty quickly if we allowed it. We’re a couple, so naturally we like to hang out with other couples, but at more than one show I’ve felt that we’re just the “spare tire friends.” the friends our friends hang out with when there are no other friends to hang out with. Maybe we’re boring because we’re not swingers and we don’t fight or argue constantly like a normal couple. Or because we’re actually married? I have no idea.
I’ve met a few Rennie “Hermits” in Louisiana who avoid drama by being autodidact, living very quietly and just popping up around a social fire for a moment, grinning and saying little. Live simple and stay out of everyone’s drama.
If we decide to upgrade to a type of pull-behind house, I’m tempted to paint the whole thing up like a gaudy reject from ’69, and there will be a sign in ten-inch letters on the door, “WIPE YOUR FEET,” and when visitors look down they will realize they are standing on a welcome mat that reads, “LEAVE DRAMA HERE.” There will be one more sign on the inside of the door, too, “YOU MESS UP MY ZEN, I MESS UP YOUR FACE!” And below that in small print: “See baseball bat –>” and they will look over to see a plush bat hanging on the wall with a baseball hat on, and a note pinned to the front of the bat will be another note: “For the real bat, look up,” and when the visitor looks up they will find a baseball bat rigged up to the ceiling by a string or rope that I can pull from across the room, and on the bat in clear lettering will be the words: “You should have left the drama outside.”
Muahaha! It’s a sadistically comforting thought.
In other news: No generator, no electricity, there’s still nothing getting done. Hoo-ray!
Peace!
