Happy Campers

 I'll never forget that early fall morning, the first cool Saturday Ken and I had had since we married the spring before. I was driving down a street in Mableton, where we lived, when I saw a nice pop-up camper for sale in a neighbor's yard. I grew up tent camping on Lake Allatoona with my family. When we graduated to a decrepit pop-up camper that my folks bought and renovated back to mint condition, we thought we'd won the lottery.   Back then, we didn't have cellphones, so I used the owner's house phone to call him. "Hey honey, I just found a pop-up camper here around the corner for sale. It's in great condition and they're only asking $125! Can I buy it?!" A long pause, then he said, "Does it have a bathroom?" I retorted: "Of course not, it's a POP-UP camper. They don't have bathrooms. But it's way better than a tent and it's awesome." He said, "Naw, I'm not camping in anything that doesn't have a bathroom. I'm really a Holiday-Inn-kind-of guy." Somewhere along the line, even though I'd played football, basketball, tennis and every kind of competitive board game with my husband, I had failed to ask about his views on the subject of camping. But heck, he wore lots of flannel and looked for all the world like a lumberjack. Surely this was not a problem. In my list of must-haves, I wanted a guy who loved Jesus, wanted a house full of kids, could chop some wood, but especially that I didn't sense in any way that I might could beat up. I was a college athlete and grew up playing ball with my Daddy and sister in the front yard. Any serious dating relationship of mine at some point included at least an arm-wrestling match. When I teased at wrestling Ken one day and he pinned me faster than a duck on a June bug, that box was happily checked. This new knowledge took me aback, but I didn't believe in divorce. Somehow we were going to have to make it work.

So we did, without camping. Until I managed to persuade the man to move us and four kids into an old camper onto our land, where we lived for two years and built a house. We sold the thing after we moved in the house and figured that would be the end of that. Until this summer...one of our sons and his wife bought a camper and renovated it. He started talking about us getting one. In recent years, I have enjoyed surprising Ken with various "toys" (used, of course) on birthdays and holidays. I've gotten him a truck and a golf cart, to his great surprise. So one night, our son teased Ken about a camper on Facebook marketplace and made him think that I'd gone and bought it. I went along with the joke, and when the kids left, Ken turned to me and said, "I can't believe you bought that!" I told him it was all a joke and that we were pulling his leg. His crestfallen face surprised me. He was disappointed! So of course I started looking for a used camper in earnest, eventually buying one and pulling it up to Los Cowboys one evening and surprising him at dinner. We've been on a quest these last few weeks, to figure out how it works, where we're gonna camp soon, and buying supplies for the thing. I'm going to paint it all vintage colors and doll it up. I've got all the supplies, but now recuperating from surgery so I have to wait a few weeks to get painting. Meanwhile, I'm fit to be tied. Papa finally wants to go camping! But then again, it does have a bathroom...