I Hid My Cigarettes Under Your Tent

This story comes from long before I met Sam, though its nature still leads me to call it a frenetic, so I feel justified in posting it.

You know how when you’re a kid, your parents are friends with people, and those people have kids who are remotely your age and suddenly it becomes your obligation to be friends with these people, lest the fragile new relationship between the adults be torn asunder? I often found myself put into this situation, many times without any interest in sitting in the same room with either the child or its parents.

For several years, each Fourth of July we spent the holiday with the Smith family, and two other families the Smiths were friends with. The Smiths had a son named Joey, and the two of us got along fairly well. We had a couple common interests, and both of us understood the role that we were required to play for the benefit of our parents, so we usually just went and played video games until it was time to go avoiding true interaction as much as possible. At the end of each encounter, we separated with an awkward handshake until it was time to endure each other again.

Joey wasn’t the problem. All in all, I liked Joey. He played video games, and that was enough for me.

The real problem came from the three girls associated with the other two families that often joined the ranks at these adult-driven get-togethers: Jenny, Trish, and Dianne. The three girls (unlike Joey and I) didn’t really understand that we were not in fact friends, and that we were really just being traded about by our parents for the sake of social advancement. This gave rise to many interesting and awkward moments—both for Joey and me—since neither of us wanted anything to do with them.

As the years progressed, each Fourth of July Jenny and Trish (who were sisters) fought each other over Joey’s attention, while Dianne dedicated herself to try and get at me. No matter what the girls did though, Joey and I stood firmly uninterested. True to our roots as middle school boys, we preferred the dim glow of the television and cartoon violence of video games to the company of the young women.

The girls’ greatest attempt at seducing us came when I was 14—in the summer right before my first year of high school. To switch things up a little bit, my family had decided to host the awkward social gathering out at our beach house in Calvert County, Maryland.

It’s worth noting that Calvert County is practically the exact opposite of the affluent northern Virginia and upstate New York areas that our families were used to inhabiting.

My family and I, as the ones who owned the house, had learned to blend in with the local populace—to them, we were weird, but not from a completely different world. To us, they were… let’s say, quaint.

Our house sits within walking distance of a beach. It’s a small, relatively crappy beach compared to what you’re probably picturing in your mind right now. It mostly did the job, but there was some trash and a lot of debris, along with one large rusted car engine that had somehow gotten half buried in the sand.

The night after all of the fireworks and celebrations had finished up, and all of our parents had gone to bed, the three girls decided that they wanted to sleep on the beach, and they really wanted Joey and I to join them. We thought about it, and now that we were one year older and wiser than before, still decided that the video games were still going to be more interesting, comfortable, and attractive to us than these girls, so we wanted to stay home.

We had, out of some sense of concern for them, suggested that they shouldn’t camp on the beach. However, our concern was limited to believing that the girls didn’t know how to pitch a tent properly, and that the tent would come crashing down on them in the middle of the night, possibly impaling one or more of them with the aluminum rods used to give the tent its shape. While we found the three girls annoying, we didn’t wish for them to die as a result of their ignorance.

Joey and I concocted the perfect solution: the two of us, being the knowledgeable, manly-men of 14 that we were, would put the tent together in the yard. After that, all the girls had to do was pick up the tent and carry it down the road, navigating their way down a couple of side streets and two flights of steep stairs before finally reaching the relative “safety” of this beach in the middle of the night, the day after the Fourth of July, in a rather “rustic” town on the eastern shore of Maryland.

We thought it was a great plan. The girls, blinded by the odd manifestation of their attraction to us, agreed that it was a great plan.

Joey and I stood and watched the three girls walk down the road with the tent hoisted above their heads—bouncing as it went.

The two of us went inside to play games, satisfied that our work was done.

About an hour after the girls had gone, and Joey and I were just about to climb into sleeping bags and fall asleep, Trish comes barging through the front door behind us, panting.

Turns out that when you put a group of teenaged girls on a beach with a tent the night after the Fourth of July, it’s sort of like leaving a large steak in the middle of a forest full of hungry bears. Except instead of bears, it was drunken rednecks.

Oops.

The girls had spent the majority of the past hour fending off a couple groups of wasted teenagers, trying to find a time where one of them could get away and get the two of us. Trish said that they thought the only way that the guys would leave them alone is if Joey and I came down and told him to step off.

We weren’t sure if it was a set up from the girls, or an actual plea for help. Either way, Joey and I felt like we had no choice. It was our duty as gentlemen to help these women in need.

Despite our chivalrous notions, by the time the three of us got back to the beach, it seemed that the coast was clear, and there were no drunk people in sight. We were about to give up and walk away, but the girls insisted that we aid them in lifting the tent up the stairs and back up to the house. It seemed that they had changed their mind, and would now rather sleep in a bed. With air conditioning.

Joey and I quickly realized that the girls had not in fact been lying about their predicament. As we neared the top of the stairs, we almost ran over two drunken guys with the tent. I would have felt bad for them, had it not been for the fact that one of them began to yell a long string of curse words at us.

While I led the girls in carrying the tent, Joey took it upon himself to get the two to stop following us.

Summary of these efforts:

Joey: “I think you guys’ve had too much to drink.”

Angry Drunk: “Oh yeah, well f--- you! I know when I’ve f---ing had enough to f---ing drink, so f--- off! You f---ing f---er!”

Quiet Drunk: “………… Yeah!”

Joey: “Look, if you guys don’t go away, I’m gonna have to call the police.”

That got their attention. They shut up and walked back down to the beach and it looked like we were safe. We managed to set the tent down in the front yard, and Joey and I started to take it apart while the girls went inside.

However, just as we were beginning to relax, I felt a thud on my back. Startled, I look down at the rock that has just hit me, then into the road at Angry Drunk, who seems to have followed us home.

Angry Drunk: Your f---ing b----es stole my f---ing cigarettes! I put ‘em under your tent, and you stole them! Gimme back my f---ing cigarettes, or I’ll f--- you up!

He then picked up another rock and threw it at Joey. Being drunk, and Joey being sober, his shot missed wildly (the one on me was apparently just lucky).

This noise attracted the attention of Jenny and the others from inside. All three of them came out, and as Joey and I were walking toward the guy, Jenny shoved ther way between us and screamed at him:

Jenny: Go f--- yourself, you f---ing pervert! We don’t have your d--- cigarettes!

I assume she had seen Angry Drunk throwing rocks, because the next thing I know, Jenny has picked up a rock about two inches across, and (using the skills she’d honed playing softball for several years) pelted it straight at the guy’s forehead. We watched as the guy was nailed right between the eyes and fell over.

Joey and I stood looking at her, rather surprised. In fact, Jenny seemed rather surprised at herself.

Me: Nice shot.

It then dawned on me that the five of us had managed to transcend that barrier from being forced friends, to being real friends, with a shared traumatic experience. We laughed at the whole scene—and at Angry Drunk as he tried to stand.

We watched the man stumble away without another word, humiliated and possibly with a concussion, then went inside and enjoyed the rest of the night in peace, our parents none the wiser.