North Carolina

When I was a kid, my parents always took me to the mountains of North Carolina for the summer. It had everything you could want: mountains to climb on, forests to romp through, lakes to swim in, rope swings to get your leg tangled in so you accidentally do some sort of fumbled bungee jump before smacking into the rocks on shore... I loved everything about it. Everything except...camp.

Other than that, the summers were great. They were also a bit dangerous. Several incidents stick out in my mind.

I always enjoyed hanging out with my cousin. He was older, taller, stronger, and pretty much better than me at everything.

On one occasion, we were climbing a tree. Of course, he made it up the tree faster and higher than I did, so on the way down I tried to shimmy down the trunk a little too quickly in a vain attempt to prove my worth. I ended up falling off the tree.

I had the continued good fortune of landing directly on a wasps' nest. Those suckers got all up in my shorts and stung me repeatedly while I ran around in circles screaming like a fool.

I was stung so many times and had so much poison in my system that I hallucinated.


It was so awesome. When I was a bit older, my younger cousin and I got lost in the woods for several hours. I tried to keep her from panicking.


Finally, there was the time I took a dare to swing off the rope swing without my bathing suit on, only to be stopped by a jet ski carrying a father and his two daughters. They asked for directions immediately after I hit the water. I tried to stir up the mud around me while pointing him toward the north part of the lake, when my cousin thought it would be a good idea to toss my bathing suit to me.

North Carolina was great!