Camping, 2005, by T.D.

From MemoryArchive

Who: T.D.
What: Camping
When: July 2005
Where: my friend's backyard

Camping

One day my best friend, Kaila, and I decided that we were going to “camp” in her backyard. We got everything we needed to spend the night out in the wilderness, candy, drinks, flashlights, pillows and blankets, bug spray, air freshener, and our ipods. At around eight o’clock, we started the long hike to the tent set up in her yard. After we got settled we talked about how we were going to show our parents that we could stay out all night. Later, around the time we were about to go to sleep, we heard scraping and felt the tent start to move! We were so freaked out that we began to scream and huddle together in the middle of the tent. Our worst fears were coming true, there was a raccoon trying to attack us! Then our “raccoon” started laughing and we realized it was just Kaila’s mom trying to scare us. We felt like stupid little kids and vowed that we wouldn’t get freaked out over nothing again. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that for long. Right when I was about to fall asleep Kaila started shaking me awake and telling me that she was hearing breathing by her head. I stared at her in disbelief and told her that I heard it too. Luckily we had enough sense to bring Kaila’s dog, Shelby, to protect us and soon decided that if there really was something out there Shelby would have been barking. But just incase we moved our blankets closer to the center of the tent. We laid there for what seemed like hours, just listening for danger and trying to stay calm. The final straw was when we heard a loud noise coming from the woods. It sounded like an elephant was standing at the edge of the yard! Kaila and I were so terrified that we started to plan how we were going to make it to the house safely. After a few seconds of intense planning we decided that we would stuff everything in our sleeping bags and make a run for in. But before we did anything drastic, we let Shelby out of the tent so she could investigate. When nothing happened to her, we ran franticly to the house. Once inside the house, we dashed into Kaila’s parents’ room and told them that there was an elephant outside. They told us that we were insane and that we could just sleep in the living room. We had finally calmed down enough to laugh about what had happened and went to watch TV before falling asleep. That was one of the best nights of my life. At the time I was terrified, but now Kaila and I are planning on “camping” again and finally proving that we are not the big chickens everyone thinks!