Willie Lobster, Detective: A SCATTERSHOT Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

“Mr. Lobster,” Savanna Koqteese said as she entered the cramped office. “I’m in desperate need of your services.”

Detective Willie Lobster looked up from his Jumbo Crossword puzzle book and squinted. It wasn’t because the room was bright, but because he’d forgotten his glasses at home.

“Look Mister, I’m not taking any new clients right now,” Lobster grumbled.

“But Detective Lobster, you’re my only hope.”

“Hope? Hope?” Lobster repeated. “Nope, I’m nobody’s hope…more like a dope. I just realized you’re a dame for Christsake. You can do better.”

“But I want you!” Koqteese said. She bent over and maneuvered her shoulders together in such a way that her massive breasts smooshed together. This erotic display was lost on Lobster, who as previously mentioned had forgotten his glasses at home.

“Look, I’m not taking on any new clients,” Lobster said. “If you want I can recommend a very good fella…does mostly doggie recovery work….”

Koqteese huffed and crossed her arms.

“Mr. Lobster, I don’t need anyone to help me find my doggie!”

“Oh,” Lobster said, shrugging. “Then you ain’t doing too bad, honey.”

Detective Lobster had recently buried his pet spaniel, Daniel. Daniel the spaniel had been Lobster’s pet and life-friend. The two had chased cars and perps for nearly fifteen years. The death of Daniel was one of the reasons why Detective Lobster wasn’t taking on any new clients.

“I lost my license,” Lobster said, revealing the other reason he wasn’t eager to acquire new work.

“But Mr. Lobster, I don’t care about all that,” Koqteese huffed. “I need help—your help.”

Squinting, Lobster tried to tell if Koqteese had smeared her lipstick or if she had a ginger mustache. Lobster couldn’t abide mustaches.

Hell, any facial hair for that matter. Nasty stuff, facial hair, it was always soaking up soup and catching crumbs. If this dame had a mustache she really was barking up the wrong tree. Lobster told her as much:

“Lady,” he said “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Mister, what’s with you and all this dog talk?” Koqteese whined.

It was starting to dawn on her that perhaps she’d made a mistake in coming to Lobster’s office. Koqteese bringing up “dog” made Lobster think of Daniel which caused his eyes to well up with quivering tears.

“Aww, I’m sorry,” he said sniffing. “I got something in my eye, will you excuse me?”

Lobster started to get up and head for the office door, when someone starting knocking on it from the other side.

“I can’t believe I wasted my lunch hour coming down here,” Ms. Koqteese muttered to herself. She followed Detective Lobster over to the front door. She’d come with the intention of hiring Willie Lobster to find her brother, Pedro. Pedro was a good boy who’d just gotten mixed up in some very bad things.

His last job, for example, was selling used cars off Interstate-21.

“I just forgot to take my Claritin this morning,”’ Lobster told her as he whipped the tears from his eyes.

The person on the other side of the office’s door continued to obnoxiously hammer away at the door.

“Alright, alright,” Lobster grunted as he opened the door. “What? Whattdya want?”

Standing in the hallway was a man wearing a rubber banana costume. His tan face poked out from the costume’s round face-hole.

“You Lobster?” the banana man asked.

“Who wants to know?” Lobster said. Again, the Detective had to squint because he’d left his glasses at home.

“Me.”

“Me who?”

“The Top Banana.”

Koqteese’s mouth fell open and her eyes widened. Before the banana man could see her, she ducked behind the door.

“Look, I’ll tell ya what I just told that lady with the stash,” Lobster began. “I’m not accepting any new clients…”

Before Detective Lobster could finish, the man in the banana costume punched him right in the gut. Detective Lobster didn’t have a large gut, but he was middle aged and had very little will power when it came to pasta and savory crepes.

These things tended to add up over time.

“Oof!” Lobster groaned and doubled over.

Staring down at the banana’s feet, Lobster could see a pair of blurry Nikes. There were a few flecks of white powder on them. Lobster noticed the powder because as he gasped for air his eyes narrowed and the world momentarily jumped into focus.

“Jesus…” Lobster wheezed. “Are…you…in…a…fuckin…banana…costume?”

“Hey man, you see me judging you?” the banana man asked.

“Good…point…”

“Look, I gotta split, but before I do remember what the Top Banana says—you listening?”

Detective Lobster shook his head.

“Stay outta the Sunbelt. That’s Banana Town, ya dig?”

Lobster grunted and said, “Oh, is that all? Of course…Sunbelt…stay out…got it.”

It should be noted that Detective Lobster had no idea what the banana man was talking about. But Lobster knew, from years of experience, that one never argues with a costumed bandit. A costume tended to lower one’s social inhibitions, allowing most folk to do things they’d normally know better than to do.

“Oh shit,” the banana man said, suddenly erupting into laughter. “I fucking said ‘split.’ That shit was not intentional, I assure you. I ain’t that wack!”

“No,” Lobster said, still gasping for breath. “Of course you’re not…that wack.”

“Alright Lobster, remember—I got my eye on you.”

And with that the banana man turned and fled down into the darkened hallway. Just as the rubber-suited attacked had disappeared from view, Lobster got his wind back.

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

DOES LOBSTER GRAB A TOILET PLUNGER ?

OR

DOES LOBSTER GO BUY A TACO?

VOTE IN THE COMMENTS!!!

Hopped Up On Drugs

Harry lost everything, buying drugs from the thugs.

Now life don't seem so sunny, cause he's one sad little bunny.

Acquired Taste(s)

As a child, I never understood it when an adult would say something was an "acquired taste." If you tried something and didn't like it that should it...end of story. Why would I need to try something many times in order to like it?

And yet, as I've gotten older (read: fatter/grayer) I've discovered that there are many things that I know love that a long time ago I didn't like.

Olives. Olives are a good example of this. When I was a kid I wouldn't go near an olive. I don't even remember trying them and not liking them...I just didn't like them. I guess it was because the black ones, when sliced and put on a pizza, look a bit like shriveled bugs. Yuck, who wants THAT in their mouth?

Coffee. I used to think coffee was the biggest con adults played on children. Every morning my parents would wake up literally CRAVING the stuff. But what was so special about it? It tasted like dirty water. Any drink you have to "dress up" with sugar and milk can't be all that great to begin with, right? But over time (and many late-night "study" sessions) I've come to love coffee. In fact, when I'm working on one of my novels I tend to drink a pot a day. And I wonder why my teeth are so yellow...speaking of which...

Cigarettes. Cigarettes are fantastic. I won't lie kids--smoking kills and I don't do it anymore, but nicotine is the shit. The euphoria one gets from a puff off a fag can't be beat. And that first puff of the day? Forget about it. I've written about my history with smoking (go look it up) so I'll spare you the details about how I initially was skeptical about tobacco. Needless to say, if you do it enough you "acquire" the taste (read: develop a crippling addiction).

Beer. See a pattern here? Everything that's horrible/terrible for you seems to be an acquired taste. Maybe saying something is an "acquired taste" is just our way of saying "please let me kill myself in peace"? Anyway, beer used to taste pretty shitty to me but now I really enjoy beer (tastes just as good coming back up, too).

Ham. Growing up, my sister Amber and I were pretty much opposed to all forms of pork (with the notable exception of bacon) . Over the past few years though, my stance on bacon has softened a bit. Just this past weekend I ordered a pizza with ham and pineapple on it. And I love a good pulled pork sandwich. I'm not sure what happened exactly...one day I just said to myself "Ah hell, I'll give pork another chance." I'm still not a fan of the pork chop, however.

Diet Soda. If there's a better example of "acquired taste" I don't know what it is. Growing up I INSISTED on drinking regular soda (I have the gut to prove it). About a year ago my wife snookered me into trying a carb diet (read: eat nothing delicious). I was so desperate for soda that I let her convince me to try drinking diet soda. And guess what? After three months of no sugar, COKE Zero tasted pretty damn good. Now I can't drink the regular stuff (too sweet).

I feel like we can program our taste buds. The diet soda example is pretty good proof of this. As a child the psychology what we like or don't like is probably just as much a factor as ACTUAL taste. Like the ham I just decided to give "another shot," the things that are acquired tastes don't change. We change. An acquired taste basically when you "stop worrying and learn to love the ham. "

Apple Of My Eye

In the fall of 2009 my friend Amber and I stopped in at a Best Buy, looking at laptop computers for Amber’s boyfriend. We made cursory passes by desktops, examining them in the way that all window shoppers do, when we came around to the computers adorned with little glowing apples. Before Amber went to the job of actually considering her options, she paused a moment at the Apple kiosk and stood there, as if dreaming.

The computers contrasted sharply with the simple, polished wood of their display table, which further set them apart from the rest of the brands. Everything else sat on black metal shelves, secured by black metal arms so that no one could pick them up and carry them away. The Apple notebooks had nothing keeping them there save for a thin white wire attached to a sensor. I’ve never attempted larceny, but I assumed that severing it would result in a lot of attention with loud sirens and flashing lights. Sitting that way, it truly felt like having one would be no more difficult than filling out a credit card application.

“My computer’s so old,” she said, tracing a finger along the lid of one of the shiny silver laptops. “I’d love to have a Mac, but…” She paused. “I don’t want to become one of those Mac snobs.”

I watched her finger as it followed the graceful curved edges of the otherwise rectangular lid, and I felt that familiar stirring, like heartstrings but in my back pocket.

Gadgets, to this day, are a big draw for me. As a self-proclaimed nerd, I have an eye for anything with glowing lights or blinking buttons, and the attraction is probably best described as “unhealthy.” Right up there with sugar and a mild self-loathing, technology could be described as one of my major addictions. Walking into an electronics store, I imagine that the sight of me is something like a kitten plopped into the middle of a room filled with yarn, if the yarn was dancing and the kitten hopped up on speed. God knows how much of my income I’ve squandered on technological trinkets that, really, are nothing more than flashy toys.

How, then, does one admit to already having become one of those snobs? I’d made the switch to Apple computers a year or so before, and I felt immediately uncomfortable in that moment, standing there looking at several overpriced products I had lying in wait for me back home. I went from feeling ashamed, then, to slightly defensive. I certainly didn’t think of myself as a snob, and as we walked away I ran through all my reasoning for wanting things like these and the justifications for already having them.

As a child, I loved toys that lit up and had switches and levers and made science-y noises. I would pretend that educational toys — things made of bright plastics that were supposed to teach a child how to count or multiply — instead made excellent controls for spaceships or a computer workstation at a distant outpost. Things didn’t even have to be toys. At my great-grandmother’s house, I would play with her melodica, a handheld musical instrument that looked like the result of a flute and a piano’s wild night in Vegas; the rows of black and white keys looked like buttons that would fire missiles or close a bulkhead against an advancing army of mutant soldiers.

Years later, in the middle of a camping trip where my mother and I seemed sentenced to boredom, she and I drove into town to look at the local shops. We were in the middle of a junk store, basically a glorified indoor garage sale, when I stumbled upon an entire computer priced at twenty-five dollars. The find felt like a prospector’s discovery of gold, and, without prodding, my mother asked if I’d like to have it. Never one to pass up a good deal, my mother, I think, overestimated the computer’s capabilities. When we got it back to our camper, we set it up on the foldaway dining table and plugged it in. From school and even at home, I was used to having a mouse and onscreen pointer to navigate things. But this thing was from a different era. All the monitor gave me was a black screen. That and a lime green cursor for typing commands in what I thought of as the old-fashioned way. At twelve years old and a child of the nineties, I had no idea how to work a computer that had possibly seen its prime during the Kennedy administration. So I was left typing little stories onto the screen, only to have no idea how to store or retrieve them when I shut the thing off.

The computer was a disappointment at best. Still, the sight of it, boulder-like and bowing the dining table, felt comforting in a way that got me through the rest of the camping trip. It even outweighed the fear I felt when using it, when the thought of it crashing through the table and crushing both of my legs covered me like a shadow.

In high school, when I got my first job, I passed up the opportunity to go to London on a class field trip so that I could buy my first real computer. The idea of going to another country felt promising in the way that adventure does when you’re a teenager and your departure date is still far off. Partly, it was my parents who diverted my desire to go. The trip was in the summer of 2002, not even a year after the events of September 11th. America had forced its way into the War on Terror, and being a U.S. citizen abroad — to my parents, at least — was like bringing a toasty roast beef sandwich into a bear cage.

“You could go to Europe,” my father said. “Or...you could get a brand new laptop.”

My mother chimed in, her voice masking her intention of me never leaving the country or even setting foot on a plane. “It’d be about the same amount of money. And it would last longer.”

All the wonders of the British Isles paled against the glowing promise of a shiny new computer, and in that moment, no matter how much I might have pretended to think about it, I was sold. As a family, we made the trip to a Best Buy, the nearest of which was almost forty minutes away, so that I could make my first foray into the world of zero percent financing.

In the way that these things go, the laptop ended up being outdated within eight months, and within shouting distance of its fourth birthday it quit on me, essentially retiring into the job of a thousand-dollar paperweight.

By this time I had a little better income, and so I purchased a new computer, an Apple laptop that I would turn around and resell less than a year later when a newer, better one caught my eye. I had no justification for doing it. I’d just finished paying off the desktop I’d bought, and there was nothing wrong with my laptop except for the fact that it lacked a few features of the shinier, slimmer models.

Standing there in the Best Buy, I had to wonder if I really was one of those Mac snobs. And not just a Mac snob, but a tech snob in general. What other reason could there be for my attitude toward technology? Should a man’s worth be measured in flashy gadgets, I guess I thought I might rank a few rungs higher than other people. But, as we walked away from the Macs and toward the other computers, perched on their demure black shelves reaching onward to infinity, it became clear that all my toys really are are testaments to the fact that I don’t have a life. While other people are out getting drunk in a friend’s cornfield or sleeping around in the backs of sports car, I’m sitting alone in a sea of glowing lights and blinking buttons, waiting for my next toy.

Hey, Remember Screensavers?

I was introduced to computers fairly early in life. They were large, beige colored boxes that for the most part held little interest for me. I mean, there's only so much use for a massive calculator when you have grass stained knees and a snot nose.

Somewhere around the end of my elementary school daze I ended up at my mother's work--home to many computers. I remember being fascinated with PegLeg, a Galaga-style space shooter, and with her STAR TREK screensaver.

Pre-the-world-is-ending-because-we're-energy-hogs, people liked to waste electricity by leaving their computers on all the time. Monitors weren't as good and screen-burn was apparently a real problem (I've only see it on ATM screens and CCTV monitors). Her Mac would instantly fire up the screensaver if you put the pointer in the far corner and didn't touch the mouse for a few moments.

Over-pixelated clown fish chugged their way through a blurry seafoam "fish tank." I was enthralled with screensavers. They were somewhere between cartoons and video games when it came to entertainment. The STAR TREK screensaver suite my mom bought had a number of really cool screensavers. There was one where the screen slowly filled up with tribbles (who multiply like rabbits). There was another one where the Enterprise drifted along the screen as the Tholian Web slowly unfurled around it--trapping the ship. I also saw a really funny Three Stooges screensaver ("ya knucklehead!").

A few years later (actually a lot later) I decided my Dell laptop needed a Matrix-like screensaver. I foolishly decided to not pay for said screensaver, but instead just find a free one online. Needless to say, I got my screensaver--and a host of trojans and other Internet nasties. Here it is, 2010 and I'm on my third computer...and you know what? I don't use screensavers.

I don't know very many people who still use them. Most people (such as myself) have their computers set up to just got black. No more clownfish. No more tribbles. No more Matrix scrawls.

Part of me misses screensavers. I'm sure there are people reading this who still use them, but for the most part, they've vanished from my world. Kinda makes me wonder what other things will vanish.

Fast Food Slogans From Red Light Districts

McDonald's

• "Over 1 Billion Serviced"

Burger King

• "Have A Four-Way"

Wendy's

• "Where's The Beefcake?"

Quiznos

• "Mmmm...sexy!"

Taco Bell

• "Think About Those Buns"

Dairy Queen

• "Hot Eats, Cool Teats"

Kentucky Friend Chicken

• "Finger Lickin' Good"

Your Favorite Song Plays Forever: PET SOUNDS

"They say I got brains, but they ain't doing me no good, I wish they could..."

I fucking hate "Kokomo."

Thanks to "Kokomo," whenever I say things like "The Beach Boys kick-ass" people think I'm joking. Or out of my fucking mind.

But back in the 1960's, before the dust had settled (and Brian Wilson completely lost his mind) The Beach Boys were in direct competition with The Beatles. History tells us that The Beatles were able to surpass The Beach Boys, and ultimately became the greatest rock band in history (arguably) but that outcome wasn't always certain. At one time, The Beach Boys had The Beatles on the run.

The year was 1965, and The Beatles had just released their first truly "grown-up" record REVOLVER. A non-touring, drug addled Brian Wilson listened to what the fab four had done and was moved. The Beatles had crafted an album whose parts added up to a (somewhat) larger whole. Rather than play by the traditional album rules where a handful of singles were anchored by "filler," REVOLVER was a full album of complex, interesting songs. Challenged by what he heard, Wilson decided to roll up his sleeves and top what the Englishmen had done.

Several months later in May of 1966, The Beach Boys released PET SOUNDS.

Although it carries the name "Beach Boys," PET SOUNDS may as well be a Brian Wilson solo record. Wilson had been toying with going solo, and the majority of the songs on PET SOUNDS were written and arranged by Wilson and his then-collaborator Tony Asher. While the rest of the band toured Japan and Hawaii, Wilson and Asher toiled in the studios.

When I say "Beach Boys" I bet you think surfing, cars, girls, and "fun, fun, fun" right? While those things are...well...fun, they don't really strike an emotional chord deep within the soul. When I'm feeling sad because the world is unfair or I'm having problems with the woman I love, I don't want to hear about some bitch's T-bird.

And when I doubt myself and the direction my life is taking, I don't want to hear "Kokomo." Actually, there's never a time when I want to hear "Kokomo."

I want to hear PET SOUNDS.

PET SOUNDS is one man taking a knife and gutting his soul. With bitchin' harmonies and an intricate, crazy-ass production. I'm not ashamed to say that I've listened to PET SOUNDS over 100 times in the past 6 months (which is when I "discovered" it by accident). I'm also perfectly willing to admit (as a BEATLE-MANIAC) that PET SOUNDS is 1000% better than SGT. PEPPER (which was the album Paul and John crafted after hearing PET SOUNDS).

PET SOUNDS is full of self-realization ("That's Not Me"), rejection of selfishness ("I Know There's An Answer"), and the awe one feels in the presence of love...not that bullshit kind you see in movies, but the actual thing ("God Only Knows" one of the first commercial songs to feature "God" in the title).

PET SOUNDS lets me know that it's okay that I'm not perfect, and that I'm not alone when I feel loneliness and disappointment ("I Guess I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" a fantastic song about trying and failing to fit in). SGT. PEPPER is a damn fine record, but if I was despondent, it wouldn't stop me from killing myself--but PET SOUNDS would. PET SOUNDS is like that older brother who sees you're having trouble and takes you aside and says "Look, I've been there...it'll get better...probably."

Sure, there are a few "throw-away" tracks. Things that the record company insisted Wilson add to increase sales (like the cover of the West Indies traditional song "Sloop John B" and the sadly immature "Wouldn't It Be Nice"). But overall, PET SOUNDS as a whole, cohesive unit, is about one man pouring his guts out--the ugliness, the insecurity, the doubt. PET SOUNDS is love, disappointment, and modern-day confusion. I feel all these things almost every day.

The love songs of PET SOUNDS are (with the glaring exception of "Wouldn't It Be Nice") vastly more mature than anything else on the radio at the time. Songs like "You Still Believe in Me" (about recognizing a partner's loyalty and patience even when you've acted less-than-stellar) and "God Only Knows" are realistic examinations of love and relationships.

What does SGT. PEPPER offer the listener? The album has been hailed for decades as a "concept album," but I ask you--what is that concept? Is it that The Beatles are pretending to be this other/fake band and the record is supposed to "be" Sgt. Pepper and his band (and not The Beatles)? That may have been the album's conceit, but other than the first two songs (and the reprise just before the end) there is little else on the record that functions as "another band's song."

For me, SGT. PEPPER is an amazingly intricate rock record. It's the greatest band ever at the top of their game. But to call SGT. PEPPER a unified work of art is a bit much. PET SOUNDS has a few tracks that aren't quite "on program," but in general, I find it much more cohesive than The Beatles album.

And those tracks that do "stray" from the theme of loneliness and self-reflection were forced upon Wilson (ala "Sloop John B") to sell more records--and make PET SOUNDS "more commercial." But being more thematic than SGT. PEPPER isn't all that makes it better, in my opinion. While it can be said that PET SOUNDS was not 100% Brian Wilson (and his immense will), Wilson was not Paul McCartney--he didn't have John Lennon sitting beside him when he crafted his record.

With two geniuses in The Beatles (although there were three, though at the time George was still hiding in the shadow of Lennon/McCartney) SGT. PEPPER should be twice as fantastic and thought provoking as PET SOUNDS...and quite frankly, it's not.

The Beatles made more classic albums, but for a brief 37 minutes, one man trumped them. The next time you're at a place where music is sold, for crying out loud do yourself a favor and pick-up the greatest piece of pop music of all time. Pick-up PET SOUNDS.

Camper

When I was growing up in Brighton, Illinois, I watched as my father fell in love with the idea of camping. As a sportsman, his love of the outdoors was an exceeding one. Fishing, hunting, he loved it all; in fact, he might have taken to the woods with nothing more than a canteen of water and a blade had there been a permit for it. My great-uncle David shared his passion for anything outdoors, and it was from him that my father developed a fascination with extended stays in the wild.

David and my great-aunt Juanita owned a camper, and every so often they would take it up to a campsite at Greenfield Lake, just a few short miles outside of Rockbridge and Where The Hell Are We? Though I didn't have a lot of experience with these kinds of establishments, the first time I went it seemed slightly downgraded. I saw it as something more akin to a Motel 6 than a Hyatt, and it had a lot to do with the clientele present. My aunt and uncle got a free pass for the fact of our relation, but a good portion of the others looked as though they'd been pulled straight out of the movie "Deliverance." Pickup trucks abounded, most of them with attached trailers, empty of the boats now bobbing down along the lakeshore. Generic country music seeped from unattended radios like broken barrels left abandoned as dogs with names like Rascal and Cooter barked halfheartedly at passers-by.

The scene around everything had a kind of unspoiled beauty to it, except, of course, for the rows of eggshell white and yellowish campers lined up in a rough grid. Everything else, though, would have made for a nice, if somewhat generic, postcard. A breeze ran through the lush trees. The water glistened, golden with the afternoon sun. Empty cans of Bud Light lay half-crumpled and just a lazy toss from each fraying mesh folding chair.

After we arrived, my father split off to talk with my uncle and cousins. Meanwhile, my mother, my brother, and I planted ourselves at the wooden picnic table with my aunt and grandmother, who were sitting there with my cousin Tammy and her daughter Stacey. They all started talking as I looked around, surveying the place, already trying to figure out how long I would last if I made a run through the cornfields at my back and tried to get back home. After a while, what surprised me most was the overall quiet of things. Every so often one might hear a car crunching gravel as it made its way down the makeshift road or the whine of a little three-person fishing boat cutting its way across the water. There were no car horns, no trains or airplanes, and no television.

The silence was intriguing at first, but then as it grew longer and longer I realized that there was nothing to distract me. No video games. No cartoons. "How," I wanted to ask, "are you supposed to make the time go by?" It never occurred to me that this was the whole point of camping: an escape from the daily grind of work and life. What made no sense, when I thought about it, was what a person got in return. Sure, paper plates could be used instead of dishes, but there were numerous times when our family did that at home. And how was catching and gutting a fish easier than ordering a Fillet-O-Fish at a drive through window?

The answer came to me when Aunt Juanita invited us to see the inside of their camper. She opened the dinky screen door and we climbed up the two metal steps after her. Inside lay all the wondrous inventions and technological marvels that made modern life worth living, all conveniently packaged inside what amounted to an oversized U-Haul. My eyes grew wide as they gazed upon the two-person couch, the small-basin kitchen sink, the fold-away dining table, and (Lord, God, hallowed be thy name!) the television. To the left of the TV was a smaller room occupied by a short, squat bed just big enough so that three fifteen-year-olds could lie down side-by-side and just barely have their feet on the bed. But that paled in comparison to the television.

I sat down on the couch, relishing the soft, cool purr of the air conditioner and the warm glow of the TV. It didn't even matter that I couldn't explain the first thing about home runs or switch hitters, my eyes never left that soccer game.

Eventually my dad and Uncle David came inside, and when my father saw me sprawled out on the couch with my mouth agape, he must have mistaken my relief for enjoyment. That coupled with my mom's very interested examination of the midget-sized refrigerator sealed the deal, and by the same time next year we had our own camper.

I was eleven when my parents, brother, and I took a trip to a local RV and camper dealership. The parking lot reminded me of the lake, except where there had been grass now we had smooth asphalt to walk on; and instead of trees offering shade, I looked up to see a billboard promising guaranteed financing for a St. Louis used auto outfit. While the lot was nothing to scoff at, it was eclipsed by the main building, which basically doubled as a single massive showroom. Inside were open displays of all the latest models of campers and RVs. The concrete floor was covered in patches of fake grass to help sell the idea that, to be living in this dream, all one had to do was sign a few papers.

After making the rounds and looking at vehicles which appeared to be nothing less than mobile palaces fit for a third-world ruler, we moved back into a more realistic price range. Ultimately, my dad had the decision narrowed down to two campers: one which was nearly identical to my uncle's, right down to the "Mallard" printed in blue-green letters along the front, with the namesake duck flying beneath it; the other one was more or less the same, just a little longer to accommodate an additional set of bunk beds at the back.

After some deliberation, and under the coda of "bigger must be better," my parents walked away with one new camper and the promise of many adventures to come.

Our first trip out, we took the camper to Greenfield on a joint venture with my Aunt Juanita and Uncle David. After going through the lengthy maneuvering process of what amounted to a school bus squeezing into a spot the size of a Smart Car, we set up our plot with folding chairs and coolers full of soda. After a full afternoon of lounging around, snacking on the camper's stash of candy, I ate dinner, which was the haul from any number of fishing trips down to the lake. Later, as the sun set, Uncle David started a bonfire, and under the assumption that hotdogs and marshmallows make for a fine late-night snack, like stereotypical Midwesterners we ate again.

That night, as we retired to our beds, I listened as the first rumblings of a thunderstorm rolled in. Within a half hour the sounds had become a presence, rocking our little plastic box like an annoyed child with a broken toy. The rain fell hard, making a cacophony of noise against the roof and the sides of the camper. Things got so bad that my parents got up to check the weather on our own little TV, which we'd taken out of my brother's room for the trip; but the camper's antenna was little more than a piece of wire taped to the roof, and so none of the local stations would come in.

Finally, after a full twenty minutes of us not having died, my parents went back to bed. This left me huddled in my bottom bunk, built into the back corner so that my legs lay between the outside wall and the bathroom. Lying there, I felt like I was in a coffin, and when the next clap of thunder struck, I dug myself out of bed and went over to the couch, right next to the little room where my parents slept.

I fell asleep sometime after, and the next morning I swore that that would be my last time camping.

From then on, whenever my parents would arrange for us to go, I went so far as to stay home by myself. My father tried to dissuade me by telling me that, if I stayed home, I'd have to cut the front and back lawn while I was there. I think he expected me to relent, but he underestimated by desire to never be in a camper again. I gladly accepted the task of mowing the lawn in the middle of the summer in exchange for not having to spend another day kicking around a lake and trying out every folding lawn chair ever manufactured to see which one made a body of water most entertaining.

My parents' fascination with camping dwindled out as the years went on. I'm not sure if it was the hassle of hauling it back and forth, the arduousness of stockpiling everything one might possibly need for a weekend, or the frustration of setting the thing up. Maybe the luster just wore off after my mother and father had tried it out a few times. By the time I learned how to drive, the camper became nothing more than a shape in my father's garage, a silent testament to my dad's adventurous spirit and my lack thereof.