You know those ocean voyage movies? The old-time ones where the ship wanders into a massive storm, and the crew is all below deck hauling out buckets of water, and the captain is strapped to the wheel and is the only thing keeping the ship afloat as the sails whip around him? Yeah, it's definitely not a realistic depiction of the operation of a ship at sea during a storm. But it was a good depiction of me in my canvas platform tent the night of the big storm.
Thirty seconds earlier, I had been dry. Pajamas on, I had gone to the communal water trough in the center of the campsite to brush my teeth. The wind picked up and the smell of rain about to break tickled my nose. Finishing quickly, I rushed back to my tent.
The sky opened, the air around me sizzled with the electric buzz of a nearby lightning strike as night imitated day. A crash resounded to my left, possibly a tree falling. Or a potato gun in the pouring rain? You never knew in a camp like this.
Frantically closing the flaps of my tent, the rain pounded down. Letting out a cry of dismay as I struggled with broken zippers, I failed to zip the flaps shut.
"No!" I shouted into the rain. Campsite staff was supposed to have fixed my tent earlier that day. Was I surprised my zippers were broken? No. They hadn't fixed it two days ago, either.
Desperation shouted from my lips into the wind as I grappled with the flaps in front of me. Te wind picked up; the rain fell horizontally. Evoking the drowning captain on deck I tried to keep my tent dry and failed miserably. It only took a moment for me to come to terms with how soaked I was despite my vice-like grip on the tent flaps. Realization struck. The fucking tent was leaking from above.
"Who the fuck set up this tent?!" I screamed into the wind as I let go of the flaps. They whipped back into the tent, the rain utterly drenching me as I scrambled to grab the emergency rain poncho and duct tape from the spare cot beside me.
The world outside was black and white, stark and deadly. The rain was a solid sheet ripping sound and reason frok the air. Rivers of wafer dripped down my face, plastering my hair, as I frantically taped the poncho over my sleeping bag. Saturated cotton pajamas stuck to my body as I futilely ripped and placed strips of duct tape across the flaps. The flaps, my hands, the duct tape were wet. This was a lost battle, and I knew it.
The rain pounded me as I sat down on my poncho-covered cot. Lightning lit the sky as I looked out over the empty campsite. What possessed me to return to with a severe storm warning? I could be dry down at the meeting hall right now with all the other counselors. But no. I'd come up the hill to ensure all the tent flaps were closed so the campers would have dry tents to sleep in. And they would. Everyone would be dry but me.
"Holy shit," I heard faintly from the rain-soaked landscape in front of me. "Kelly told me you'd come up alone to close all the tent flaps. But why the fuck did you stay up here alone in the storm?" came the faint voice.
My eyes wet, partially from the rain, partially from pity tears, I couldn't make out more than a dark form approaching my soaking wet tent. All I knew was a blurry form with a deep male voice approached me from the void.
He pulled the flaps closed behind him, temporarily blocking the rain as he stepped into the tent.