Pearls&Grit

I love people watching. Taking up residence at various campgrounds affords me the best people watching opportunities in the world. At my current spot, I have the best vantage point for observing people living in their little orbs, all from my little orb, and staying largely unnoticed. (Makes me sound a little bit like a creeper, doesn’t it?)

With it beginning to hint (ever so faintly!) at fall here in the northern parts of the country, the last of the season’s campers are trickling in, pickup beds stacked to maximum capacity with firewood.

And from my little corner, tucked up under the trees, I can sit in a patch of warm sunlight and watch them. The ones that can back trailers…and the ones that can’t. The ones that are just passing through and are exhausted. The campers who are there for one last big hurrah and unload their corn hole boards and badminton nets, only to just sit around the fire because it was so much work getting packed up in the first place.

This week, there was a family that rolled in, in the area to do some kind of restoration work, apparent through the matching fluorescent yellow T-shirts. Mom going in and out of the camper, in and out, door slamming, Diet Coke gripped tightly in her hand. The daughter, rushing around, her dad’s right-hand man, setting stabilizers and hooking hoses. The boyfriend, eager to please the patriarch of the family, but in doing so only accomplishes locking Mom in the camper, then locks Mom out of the camper, sans Diet Coke and Dad tries to keep his cool while the boyfriend retreats to the edge of the site for a smoke.

“Look Dad,” I can imagine the daughter saying, as she helps lower the rear toy hauler ramp to help free Mom, “Ronnie is a good guy, he just hasn’t ever done this camper thing before.”

I can see the grumble in Dad’s shoulders. “What, it’s a new thing to make sure the keys aren’t inside when you close a locked door?”

They disappear around the other side of the camper and I see that Mom has gone to join Ronnie. His shoulders are tense and Mom’s hand flails in and out of the pocket of her shorts as she tries to reach common ground after her soda deprived come-apart. But in the end the smoke from Ronnie’s cigarette proves too much and she leaves, waving her hand in front of her face and disappears into the camper indefinitely.

I don’t see much more of them. They leave first thing in the morning, return home late at night and by the next day, the camper is packed up and they are, presumably, onto the next job.

I wonder who will show up next.