Before I left I posted about my love and hate of camping. Apparently I forgot one of the other things I hate about camping: Obnoxious red-neck campers.
The park was wonderful, the weather was perfect and I was looking forward to a quiet, peaceful night of sleep. That was before 12:17 AM when our red-neck “neighbors” pulled in to set up their camp. They apparently never saw the sign posted that quiet hours started at 11 PM. While everyone else in our campground was quietly dozing, our neighbors started bickering loudly as they set up their tent. I think there was some alcohol involved. And maybe some major dysfunctional personal history. The woman sounded like Roseanne Barr with a southern accent. She was constantly yelling at her husband. ”BOBBY!” She screamed. “BOBBY!!” My husband does a great impression of this. He sounds like a cross between a hick and chain smoker.
At some point in the setting up of their tent, they decided to roll down their car windows and blast country music. I haven’t heard music that loud since my high school dance played AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” For some reason that was THE head-banging song back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when temporarily losing your hearing at a high school dance was cool. Although Bobby and his wife (Roseanne Barr-sound alike) didn’t play any AC/DC, they did blast country radio during commercials, because you can never have enough of the jingle “Save Big Money at Menard’s” in the middle of the night.
At this point I looked over at my husband who had his sleeping bag pulled completely over his head. It was a warm night and I knew he had to be sweating profusely but I guess you pick your poison–blaring radio or drenching sweat? (My husband could still hear the music and is amazed that someone wrote a song using the cliched movie phrase, “You had me at hello.” I mean, how long ago was Jerry McGuire?) After a long string of country music and commercials and DJ talking, in which I wanted to take their car and run over my own head, they turned the radio off. The night finally seemed promising. Maybe they would quiet down. Did I mention they had an obnoxious barking mutt?
The radio was off but that did not seem to stop them from continuing their very loud conversations, which including swearing, and lots of repeated screaming of Bobby’s name. Of course Bobby had his own issues getting angry over everything including the napkins.
Bobby: Where are the napkins?
Bobby’s wife: We’re fresh out of napkins.
Bobby: (ticked off): Fresh out of napkins?!
All this talk about being “fresh out of something” has added this new phrase to my vocabulary. At this point I was fresh out of patience for Bobby and his wife, who had their final explosive conversation around 3:30 AM.
They were getting into the tent ready to go to bed when Bobby’s wife couldn’t find her pillow. In the process of looking, Bobby bumped her in the eye. She started screaming at him. He said that he didn’t mean to do it. His wife erupted into cussing him out, bringing up their marital history and screaming at him at the top of their lungs, saying “How does that make you feel Bobby? Huh? How does that feel?!” Of course, Bobby wasn’t going to take it. He cussed her out just as vehemently and threatened that she better shut her mouth before somebody called the cops. If my cell phone had been close by and if I hadn’t been scared that Bobby had a sawed off shotgun, I might have called the cops.
Everyone was awake at this point including my three year old daughter. I ended up sleeping in her bed as she held on to me during the fighting. The next morning she told me, “Mommy, I just couldn’t sleep with all that noise.”
My husband joked over breakfast that he was going to walk over to their tent, introduce himself and say, “I heard your name is Bobby…”
Ironically they hardly said a word the whole morning. I guess they had said all they needed to the night before.
