if it's raining, we're camping. | williamsport, md

My poor Dad. He has been an avid fan of camping for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, he is jinxed. Every time we go camping, it rains. Every single time. And I don't just mean there's a light spritz of summer sprinkles for an hour and then we head back outside, I'm talking torrential downpours for hours on end. The kind of rain that leaks through the roof of your hand-me-down tent (you know, the one with the patches and seven cans of Scotch-Guard sprayed all over it); the kind that comes sloshing in through the floor and soaks through your sleeping bag and onto your socks before you wake up; the buckets and buckets of wet stuff that left my mother packing four small children into the minivan at 3 a.m. to drive our soaked tooshies home.

And he tries so hard to make it fun, really. When the downpour kept us inside that stuffy and humid tent, he'd make a trip to the camp store for chocolate eclair ice cream bars. You know the kind I mean - the ones with cookie crumbs stuck all over the outside and a chocolate middle. We played card games and Uno and anything else that was available for kids in the 90s before they were all cracked out on video games.

So after years of bad weather and my Mom, who is not a camper by birth, requesting better accommodations - we upgraded. We started small with a little pop-up camper, but with all the aunts, uncles, friends, and little cousins that were tagging along each trip, we had to go bigger. Then bigger again. And now when the rains come down and the floods come up, it's no problem. We watch Beetlejuice on DVD. We stare out the windows while snuggling in our blankies (see Exhibit A, below). We see who can spit a cherry pit into the trash can without detouring to the floor.

And so now we're all happy campers. We camp at the beach, the lake, the woods, the backyard. We whip out the marshmallows, the hot dogs, the cornhole boards. And sometimes, when it inevitably rains, we quietly turn on the t.v. and wait for it to pass. I think we've earned it.