Friday Night or Sleepless in Mona

I have had a social event to attend every night for the last 8 days. That's a lot of socializing, especially for me, and frankly I'm sick of people.

On Friday some people from my ward decided to go camping. I said I would go with them but I probably wouldn't camp there because I was tired from a long week. At first we were going to go camping up at squaw peak, but then it was decided that Mona was a better choice, cuz hey the water is right there and you can go rope swinging whenever you want.

We got there at 7 or 8 and set up camp. We made a fire and some people started cooking while the rest of us took off for the rope swing. I didn't participate in the rope swinging because I hurt myself so badly the last time I tried it, but I did watch others foolishly participate. It was all fun and good until I saw something swimming in a nearby river. My fellow ward member Chad thought it was a turtle... but no that's not a turtle. It was skinny and hairy, that's a weasel or a large rat. After that I began to question the "outdoor adventure" even more, but somehow they had already convinced me to stay the night.

We headed back to camp and people ate their dinners that they had brought. I didn't because I had eaten dinner before and I didn't bring food because I didn't think I would be hungry. I was wrong. Mattie our EQP was kind enough to share his cherries with me though. Thanks Matt.

After dinner we played a half-hearted game of truth or dare and ate cobbler. My friend Elise and I were trying to get people into the game but they weren't really feeling daring or truthful. For instance, we dared our friend Lincoln to give us his best Celione Dion impression or go ask the neighboring campers for directions back to Provo, but he wouldn't do either. Some good things did come out of the game though. We learned who Greg has a crush on and we also got to hear two good stories about failed bladder control. So all in all we came out ahead.

We were having a good time laughing and talking until the police showed up and asked us to keep it down. They then asked us where we were from and surveyed the campsite for alcohol... We weren't that loud... but that really put a damper on the game, but not before we learned that Lindsey would like to be stranded on a deserted island with Greg.

After that Elise and I had girl talk with Chad who asked such thought provoking questions as "why do they call them panties?"

Then we were tired so we went to bed. To do so we had to kick Matt and his friends out of our tent who were in there playing Torro. They left our tent but proceded to set up at tent next to ours and continue playing. After some time I managed to lose consciousness, even though I was sleeping on the hard ground, without a pad, in an uncomfortable sleeping bag and only 50% of a pillow. I woke up about a half hour later to the sound of happy people still playing cards. They had woken up Elise too who was in the sleeping bag next to me. I looked at her, she looked at me... We were both annoyed. We continued to lay there for the next half-hour listening to them unable to go back to sleep. Finally they played their last hand and we thought the torture was over, but no, then they started telling jokes. All kinds of jokes, pirate jokes, lawyer jokes, jokes about a pig with a peg-leg. I yelled at them to shut-up and turn off their light, but then they started doing machine gun impressions. I continued to yell at them and eventually Matt came out of the tent to say "hi" to us before going to bed. I told him we weren't friends anymore.

About this time my little sister came back to our tent which she had vacated because she couldn't sleep either. In her absence, I had rolled onto her very comfortable sleeping bag and pillow. When she got back she told to get off her sleeping bag and pillow. By this time I was feeling very belligerent so I yelled back, "No!" She continued to try to coax me off of it. Several words were exchanged such as, "No, this was your idea.." and Mary: "This isn't funny." Me: "Life isn't funny deal with it." Finally she did get me off of her sleeping bag and we all went back to sleep after a couple more hours of tossing and turning on the hard ground. We were awoken at 6 or 7 by some roosters at a nearby rooster farm... and that was my camping experience in a nutshell.