Our First Campground Conflict
She drove into her spot next to us in a small camper van with her dog riding shotgun. Our first meeting with her was shortly after she let her dog out on a leash … one long enough to easily reach into our campsite. The pup playfully lunged and barked in hopes of encouraging Kaia to go a few rounds of wrestle mania. Kaia, who frequently exudes all the playfulness of an aloof kitty when confronted with an overly exuberant puppy, found the fellow’s antics to be quite droll. Trying to be nice neighbors, we carefully introduced ourselves and Kaia to this very hyper, very large puppy. He was, after all, standing quite near our front door. Upon hearing the barking, the woman came out of her van. She said she was busy making or eating or cleaning up dinner. She was generally confused about the culinary order of things or unable to link time with coherent thought. We could immediately tell that she was drunk. Not the kind of drunk where you sit back in your chair, smile and fall asleep, but the kind where you feel you are the smartest, most fun, and most interesting person in the room… or in our case, campground. Her stories were punctuated with an under-her-breath statement of, “I’m drunk and high.” Ohhhh goody. Before our efforts to disengage reached any culmination of success the woman launched into an original composition, complete with rhyme but devoid of rhythm. Thankfully, she proved to be easily sidetracked and somewhere between the second and third stanzas she forgot what she was doing. James suddenly improvised an urgent phone call to attend to and I most certainly had something boiling on the stove. We bid her goodnight and dove for our camper door before she could hit the refrain.
In James’ career of law enforcement, the calls that frustrated him the most were those involving alcohol. There was no reasoning with an incapacitated mind. He has shared numerous stories of those he was taking to jail where one, for 30 minutes straight, screamed “piggy, piggy, piggy” from the backseat. Or the ones that wanted to show how strong they were by fighting everyone and everything. Ask, tell, make was his pattern and he disliked the “make.” Because of this, and his zero tolerance for out-of-control drunk people, we decided to lay low for the evening, keep quiet, and hope she slept it off.
We weren’t so lucky. At 7:15pm, our drunk and high neighbor decided that the noise from the kids playing near the camper on the other side of us was just too loud. Yes, there were some intermittent squeals of joy from the little ones who were playing a glow in the dark game of tag. Drunk and high lady came out of her van screaming “shut up, shut up, shut up.” What is it with repeating words? James jumped up to see what was going on, with a giddiness that seemed to say, “Will you look at this, the neighbors are putting on a show!” He grabbed some ice cream out of the freezer and, with marvelous foresight, a spoon from the drawer. He positioned himself in front of the open window in our bedroom for a good vantage point, hoping that things wouldn’t escalate where he would feel the need to intervene as a neutral party.
Meanwhile, drunk and high lady lumbered over near the kids, she screamed at them to be quiet and that she, despite her effusive overuse of volume, wanted peace and calm because that is why she camped. By this point, the kids’ parents entered the confrontation and asked her to lower her voice. They apologized for the kids being loud but also called her out for the way she handled the conflict. One thing we know, drunk people are rarely soothed by calm logic. They told us later that, at that point, they realized that she was not in control of her full faculties and realized they weren’t going to have a constructive conversation with her. Things calmed down as she ambled back to her van, throwing parting verbal shots back at the other campers. Now we all hoped she would sleep it off.
About 6:00am we awoke to a dog barking and it sounded near the trailer of our neighbors with the kids. The dog’s bark sounded vaguely familiar in my sleepy haze. We all had dogs so I did a quick check that it wasn’t Kaia. Coincidently, it was drunk and high lady’s dog and it continued for a solid 10 minutes. I suspected the after effects of the previous evenings over indulgence was, for her, inhibiting a punctual return from the land of nod. There ensued a chorus of frustrated voices from the neighbors of “shut up, shut up, shut up” towards the dog. I giggled. I then had the thought that possibly something was wrong with drunk and high lady. As I was getting dressed to go out and get the dog, then check on her, I heard her come out to quiet her puppy. This was my cue to crawl back in bed, pull a warm blanket up to my chin and reacquainted myself with a pillow.
Our neighbors told us later that she addressed them again about the previous night and they apologized for the kids being too loud. They also told her that her reaction to the noise really scared the kids and caused one of the kids to cry and not be able to sleep due to being afraid. The woman said “good.”
How sad. What a golden opportunity she missed for repairing the damage done.
Our travels have brought us to amazing places and have surrounded us with fantastic people. In our six months of travel, we had yet to be next to someone who was genuinely rude. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Most people that don’t want to chat just keep to themselves. Some, we don’t want to spend time with, yet we are always friendly. The friendliness and helpfulness of others in the campgrounds is something that pleasantly surprised us on our adventure...and still does. This conflict was a reminder that we are interacting with a cross section of people, from a variety of backgrounds, with a variety of personalities, and not everyone makes good choices. We are happy that James didn’t need to practice his conflict management skills and really happy that things were handled by the people involved. The neighbors with the kids told us they used it as a teachable moment about how people may be unpredictable when under the influence and how not everyone communicates with the same values of kindness. In this case, both parties left the next day and the drama went with them. Now we’re just waiting to see who our new neighbors will be. And I just noticed that James put ice cream on the shopping list. Oh boy.
