A new definition of insanity

The Bright family is making me go camping again. Ostensibly, this is for Sassy’s birthday. It’s what she wanted to do for her 13th birthday. I don’t understand why, but whatever.

She has several friends coming with us and we invited the extended family. Now it’s blossomed into an enormous 786 person melee. I might be exaggerating a little, but not by much. Just understand that there will be a crap-ton of people.

This does not make me any  more excited to go. You faithful readers will surely recall that I consider camping – or any outdoor activity, really – as an abomination.

This week finds my family launching into a flurry of activity. There’s packing clothes and buying groceries and, inevitably, there’s something that needs to be repaired on either the boat or the camping trailer. This year, both.

What is this lunacy?

So this evening I’m standing at the kitchen table folding laundry. Sassy asks if I’ve done any of hers yet. I pointed to her pile.

“Great,” she said, grasping a t-shirt from the stack. “I want to iron my clothes for camping.”

I looked at her with the same expression you’re making right now. Sassy has never ironed a single item of clothing in her life. I have no idea what the hell this is about.

“Why?” I asked, stupidly.

“Because I just want to.” I never got a real reason out of her. There was no point belaboring it.

She turned on the iron and I showed her how to fill the reservoir for steam. By God, if she was going to iron, there would be creases. She proceeded to try to jam the t-shirt over the ironing board, neck first.

“No,” I told her, and flipped the shirt around. I know what she was trying to do. She wanted me to iron her clothes for her, but that in an inexcusably stupid idea and I’m not falling for no “banana in the tailpipe” (gratuitous Beverly Hills Cop reference).

“How do you do this?” she asked making ineffective swipes with the iron.

“You take the hot metal part and press it against the offensively wrinkled clothes.”

She made a “har har har” noise at me. I have no idea where she gets this sarcastic tone.

I resumed folding clothes because that’s what people do. She abandoned the ironing plan because that was stupid and no one irons clothes to go camping.