Slightly Cursed

Just before my 17th birthday, we moved from the sizzling desert of Arizona’s Sun Valley to the more temperate western slope of Colorado. It had been a great idea in theory. In fact, I think it might even have been mine to begin with, but I would no longer admit that. I was 16 and it really sucked being away from my friends in a way that the scenery just couldn’t make up for.

I spent quite a bit of my time on the phone with my friends back home in Arizona. Whether it was my incessant whining, or because they really missed me, we soon made plans for my eventual rescue. They would drive up to get me, spending a little time hanging out in Colorado for a few days before taking me to my grandmother’s. Our biggest obstacle was transportation, but my best friend at the time, Chris C., had a fairly reliable car.

The Big Green Boat, as we called it, was nearly the size of Rhode Island and made completely out of steel. Real steel, like back in the days of Hoffa. Somewhere, a small, independent nation cheered every time Chris filled the gas tank. It only took a few short months until we’d all saved up enough gas money for the four of them to come and get me. We were pretty sure my mom would give us gas money to get back to Arizona. It had worked for Kenny.

As teenagers, I and my little group of friends were all very independent thinkers. As adults, it’s served us well. Mostly. As kids, though, we tended to implement ideas first and ask questions later. Something my friends and I absolutely no longer do, of course. So when one of the guys suggested that we go camping up at the Buckhorn Lakes before driving 12h back to Phoenix, the challenge of the wilderness enticed us. Grabbing some sleeping bags, a three-man tent to stuff the five of us into, a pillow, and a hastily assembled bag of food stuffs, we loaded up my step-dad’s Chevy Luv and prepared to take on the wilds of Colorado.

“Any of you idiots know how to work a gun?” My step-dad was eyeballing us with a strangely jaded look in his eye. He hadn’t said anything so far, just watched us prepare for our excursion. Holding up a somewhat battered rifle in one hand, and a box of bullets in the other, step-dad said, “Probably you should take my .22 with you, in case you get a cat wandering by. Or you could smack those two with it before they skank up the back of my truck.” He jerked his head toward two of my friends, annoyed. They were more preoccupied with each other than with me, the focus of their trip. In fact, I don’t think I’d seen their faces since they’d arrived and frankly, I was wondering how they managed to breathe.

Chris B. manlied up, “Yeah, I can handle a gun.” He looked confident. Chris always looks confident, something I’ve always loved about that guy. Practical and level-headed most of the time, he’s one of those people who, even back then, inspires trust. My step-dad suspiciously handed it to him, with strict instructions about how to not be a moron with it, and told us that if we lost it or broke it he’d have to kill us.

Chris B. took the gun and stowed it behind the seat of the truck without once getting the pointy end of the gun in anyone else’s face, so I was happy with him being in charge of the .22. Everyone piled into the truck and we took off.

Thanks to our careful planning, it was pretty much dark by the time we got to our destination. This made it easier to pick out a camping spot, since everything looked the same anyway. We parked the truck, and headed up the hill through a small stretch of woods, and set our things down near the shore of the lake.

A few of the more ungrateful fishermen on the lake yelled at us to shut up as we did our best to drive the fish in their direction. Which of course made no sense to us.

Nearly an hour later, we’d managed to get the tent mostly set up and were still trying to invent fire. Then the sky opened up and dropped an ocean on us. Grabbing anything we could, and trying to prop the side of our tent up, we sought shelter. Unfortunately, the tent was “occupied.” Having left the eye bleach at home, none of us were brave enough to go in. We stood there, a smug little trio, and watched the whole side of the tent collapse on them instead.

We racked our brains for nearly twelve seconds before someone said, “Let’s build a lean-to!” It was a brilliant suggestion that I swear I had no part in, but I helped anyway as we selected a nice tree near our pathetic little fire, and set off to find branches and things to lean against it. It didn’t take long for us to erect our make-shift shelter. It was nearly big enough for all three of us to stand under, and only about half of the rain was getting on us at that point.

We were having a GREAT TIME! The three of us who were not thrashing around inside the soggy, collapsed tent huddled in the lean-to, shivering and talking as the temperature plummeted to the low-50s. Now, you’d think that being desert rats out of our element, we’d have been a little more prepared. But in keeping with our track record of brilliant foresight, none of us had brought jackets. Or extra blankets. We were soaked to the skin, and we were all wearing shorts.

Luckily for us, the lean-to soon caught on fire; we were able to warm ourselves while trying desperately to put it out before the entire forest lit up like a Christmas tree. Panting and sweating in the rain, we were staring at the smoking embers of our lean-to when we heard it: a low growl.

Looking around at each other, Chris B. grabbed the gun and we alerted the occupants of the tent. Again I was impressed that he did it without the pointy end of the gun being pointed at any of us. It might have been amusing to see the occupants silhouetted against the side of the tent, so we tried real hard to see something, to no avail.

“The bullets!” Chris B. hissed. “Someone hand me some bullets!” We all looked at him, stupidly. Bullets?

“Didn’t you grab them?” Chris C. asked. “You were in charge of the gun!” Where Chris B. has always been the quiet, practical one, Chris C. is still, to this day, the one of all of us who never misses a thing.

It was nearly eleven o’clock at night, everyone was soaking wet, our food was ruined and we were starving, our tent was wrecked, we’d burned down our lean-to, and our fire was dying. We stood back-to-back, surveying the woods surrounding our campsite, with our bludgeoning tool in hand ready to take on the enemy kitty cat together!

So there we were, on the raggedy edge. Trying not to get eaten by the wild animal lurking just outside of vision. In retrospect, it was probably somebody’s stomach that was doing the low growling noise that sent us flying over the hill, hell-bent for the truck. Never mind that any enemy kitty cats would have had the good sense to be sitting under an outcropping of rock or something until the storm was over.

Early the next morning we went back up to retrieve the gun before my step-dad killed us for dropping it like a bunch of idiots. We looked all over for telltale footprints of a medium sized cat stalking five loud humans with a gun. They do that, I’m sure, because we’re so much tastier and easier to catch than, say, a rabbit. We scraped everything up into a soggy lump and left.

Even after nearly two and a half decades, none of us have said much about that night. Would you?

written by vic

Born a tomboy, I always was one of the guys. Even as a teenager I never had a whole lot of tolerance for fluff, and being that always popular combination of loner and geek, most girls didn’t want to hang out with me anyway.

My husband, who’s seen pictures of me as a teenager, says I had a look of barely controlled rage in my eyes and that they were probably afraid. I don’t see it though. I think they were all just mean. So I spent a lot of time with my nose buried in a book, adding “bookworm” to the mix and earning me a Trifecta for social annihilation.

One sweltering summer night in Arizona, I and a few of my socially awkward brethren were hanging out playing strategy games. Now, this wasn’t your typical group. No one sat around plotting world domination (probably because it hadn’t occurred to us yet) and there wasn’t even a chess board in sight. All we needed to do to win was to stay awake.

By 3:00am, the Monkees marathon had ended, we were out of snacks, and everyone had the shakes from drinking eleventy-billion pots of coffee. Only one person had fallen asleep so far; we’d already super glued his fingers together and tattooed him with Sharpie. Clearly, the situation needed a guiding voice of reason to spur some action.

Keep in mind that I was socially doomed from an early age. Because of this, I lack that filter between my brain and my mouth that keeps most people out of trouble. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Not that it matters, of course. Sometimes no one noticed; other times, they did.

But in case you’re anything like I was, probably it’s a good idea to make sure the guy you’ve insulted doesn’t have any weapons. Hypothetically, if he were to point one at some of your older brothers, things could go badly for you the next time they got you alone. Or so I’ve heard. Hypothetically.

No one else was stepping up with the ideas, and I needed to be entertained.

“Let’s tie someone to the staircase,” I proposed. “We’ll hunt each other, and whoever gets captured first gets hogtied and cuffed to the staircase.”

Okay, so it wasn’t very well thought out. But it was a much better plan than sitting around waiting for a Sharpie attack. After some brief discussion, the others agreed that a lively war game was just what we needed.

There were four of us still awake, so we split off into pairs. Teamed up with my friend, Lance, I slinked outside into the darkness to set a trap for the others. Lance and I spent the next half hour stalking them, to no avail. Then Lance went rogue.

I had almost no warning. Lance reached out to grab my wrist just as the other team tried to grab me from behind, but I darted away before they caught me. Circling around behind the garage, I slipped inside a small shed. Obviously, I needed some sort of weapon! I grabbed the closest thing I could find: a golf club.

Taking a moment to kick myself for yet another brilliant idea, I readied my defense, then stepped out of the garage into the darkness. Tiptoeing across the yard, I was careful to stay hidden in the shadows.

It wasn’t long before I could see the back door. I knew that if I could get inside and hide the rope, I’d win the game. Winning was every bit as important as avoiding being tied to the staircase, if not more so. Just as I approached the patio in my beeline for the door, two of the guys materialized, one from each side of the house. They headed straight for me. Planting my feet firmly apart, I faced them and stood my ground.

“If you come any closer, I’m going to whack you with my golf club!” In one swift motion I swung the club up and behind me, intending to hold it over my shoulder like a baseball bat. Unfortunately for Lance, his face got in the way.

Focused on the team approaching me from the front, I didn’t hear him sneaking up behind me until he screamed. After determining that the others were no longer a threat, I let go of the golf club and turned to assess the damage.

Tears streaming down his face, Lance’s nose pretty much squirted blood in every direction. Everyone else took a step back; they were moving away from me, not the blood. It was a slightly awkward situation.

One of the guys blurted out, “I think you’re supposed to yell, ‘Fore!’ before you do that.” Lance was not amused by that.

We dragged him into the house and attempted some first aid before deciding it was probably a good idea for him to go to a hospital instead.

“No one’s answering at his house,” one of the guys said. “We should call 911 so they’ll send an ambulance.”

Lance tried to hold back the tears as he shook his head, “Doh ampulanth! Mah thadth will kihl mah if I thake an ampulanth!”

We wasted a good fifteen minutes trying to convince him to let us call 911. The nearest hospital was two miles away in the soon-to-be blazing Arizona sun. Plus, he wasn’t looking so good. His face had swollen to fascinating proportions. His nose had a huge gash across it and Lance was covered in blood all the way down to his shoes.

Feeling mildly responsible for his predicament and worried that he might fall over into traffic, I volunteered to walk to the hospital with him. Which scared him a little. I promised not to bring the golf club along, but that didn’t help much either.

So Lance set out to the hospital by himself, about a two mile hike. Dripping blood off the tip of his nose.

We made up a new game to play and occasionally wondered aloud if Lance ever made it to the hospital.

Almost three hours later, Lance’s Dad came by for his things. He didn’t say much, just sort of glared at everyone. Especially me.

We found out the next day that, because he was only 14, after Lance walked 45 minutes to the hospital, they couldn’t give him anything for the pain until they located his parents. Who were stuck in rush hour traffic on their way to work. He had to wait for two hours while the hospital located them.

Lance avoided me after that.

written by vic