Lately the rants have been flowing from me like something flowish, (new word alert), and I’m actually ahead of the game. What I mean by that is, I’ve gotten in touch with my inner squirrel and have managed to store some up for a few weeks.

As our feline contributor, Callie the Cat, oft points out, humans are an interesting crew. One aspect of such a claim came to the forefront of my brain whilst camping recently.

An incident occurred at the campground that set me off, so to speak, and sparked my grey cells into action. The results of such will be shown below.

I was casually visiting with an ardent fan, Lee of Greenville, who happened to be stalking me-I mean, who happened to be riding his bike in the neighborhood and, upon my invitation, entered “Camp Lonesome Dove” with much caution and trepidation, as anyone with half a brain would.

In the midst of Lee prattling on about how excellent he feels my columns are, suddenly, it happened. (Are you in total suspense yet?) A rather large motor home, piloted by an elderly gent, slowly, yet methodically, moved toward my site.

I murmured, loudly enough for Lee only to hear, “Keep going, don’t camp next door, don’t stop here.”

Well, of course, since the campground only houses about a hundred sites and four were taken, the poor old guy had no option but to exit his house on wheels, walk into my territory and, after asking a question or two about paying for his night of camping, he proceeded to inquire if the site next door, in between my space and another

occupied region, had electric.

I quickly said that it did indeed have electric and then I suddenly took on the rapid-fire-fast-tongue-technique of a time-share saleswoman. I gave the senior citizen glowing reviews of the other lovely sites before him. I told him they all had electric and were simply fabulous. I even managed to say something like this: “Just look at the beauty of all those campsites closer to the water,” for good measure as well. Heck, I practically volunteered to set up his camp for him. Anything to keep him from staking his claim next to my charming little plot.

I couldn’t go on forever, (yes, even I have to shut my mouth on rare occasions), and he managed to ask how I felt about being in such close proximity to another. Confession time was at hand and I had to be up-front.

Now, in the old days I would have fibbed about how I really felt but, since I’m now cold hearted, I answered him honestly. I said, “Well, do you want the truth?” I stated, in a peachy manner, of course, that I would rather not be crowded if it were not totally necessary.

Mind you, the whole campground, save four, yes four, sites was wide open and totally available for his usage.

I do confess that when he sauntered back to his travel trailer, I immediately felt awful. Poor Lee had to endure all of my blathering about emotions of guilt and I’m fairly certain that I have one less enthusiastic fan. So, I’d like to thank Lee for his years of dedication to my column and wish him well at this time.

Speaking of Lee again, I was kidding, of course, when I said

something about the whole stalking scenario. However, I refuse to admit that he wasn’t praising my column wildly when the senior citizen arrived.

Back to the theme of this piece. I am surmising that the same supernatural force that draws folks to sit directly in front of other people in an otherwise empty movie theater, compelled the elderly gent, mentioned above, to want to be close to your humble correspondent.

I don’t get his and I probably never will. Perhaps it is a sense of comfort to plant oneself as close to another as humanly possible?

Maybe it’s a strength in numbers kind of scenario? I am just throwing out ideas here at this point.

As for the camping episode, why, in a year of Februarys, (I’m sick of saying month of Sundays but wonder if it should be spelled with an “ies’ or just ‘ys,’ anyhow, I digress), would a person, given the choice of 90 other gorgeous sites, give even a split second thought

to clustering in with others? (By the by, there were literally 90 available as I checked online and Linesville has 94 campsites. I knew you were worried sick about this and I had to check it out so you’d calm down and all.)

I don’t really know where else to go with this rambling piece so I think I shall end by stating that I have to agree with Callie the Cat Columnist in terms of her observations of human nature.

Simply stated, we are all just a bunch of big old loons and there

isn’t a thing we can do about it.

Well, I’m off to reserve my campsite for the last official state park camping of the season. I will be sure to squeeze between two, or three other non assuming folks and will drive them nuts with my sign, windsocks, candles, banners, carpeting, hammocks and anything else I can schlep along. Wish me well until next time.