Campsite Disrespect

Leana and Mark

The air inside the RV tasted like sunscreen and diesel. The men had gone to the lake with fishing poles and a red plastic cooler. Their wives, Leana included, were marooned at the campsite for another hour, charged with lunch and overseeing children whose idea of hygiene was to wet their hair under the spigot and call it good.

Camping wasn't Leana's cup of tea. She went along with it because Mark cherished his family's custom of spending two weeks each summer on a road trip, with a line of RVs moving from one state park to another. Leana, who had been raised in a third-floor apartment, had never camped in a tent or owned rain boots until she married Mark. Still, she managed to come to terms with the mud, gnats, and the practical inconvenience of using the communal bathhouse.

It was the afternoons that wore her thin. By the second day, the women had segregated themselves onto collapsible lawn chairs and unspoken sides: the ones who brought makeup, and the ones who mocked the ones who brought makeup. Every conversation circled the men. Their quirks, their failings. How useless they were at finding anything in a kitchen, how allergic they were to listening, how their voices changed when the boss called versus when their wife called.

They didn't talk about their husbands as if they were harmful or mean, but rather as slightly flawed and somewhat insignificant, like pets that could be taught to use the toilet if one was willing to make the effort. They showed no respect for their husbands whatsoever.