Parenting Guru: How not to camp

I do not camp.

And if anyone asks me, I am up front and honest about it. I am allergic to camping. Okay, maybe not allergic to camping itself, but if you give me long enough I can find something out there in the wild near the campground to which I am allergic.

Okay, fine. I do not camp because it doesn't have the one thing I cherish most in the world: my own private bathroom. Also? There are bugs. I do not like bugs. I'm sure they have their own place on the planet, but that place isn't in my sleeping bag.

But the main reason I hate camping is that I've never once had a good time doing it.

When I was a kid we camped all the time. Every weekend we camped. And worse, we camped from a boat. I hate boats. You don't know what's floating below you. It could be Bruce the shark stalking below, waiting to tip the boat over. Trust me, no good comes from being on a boat. Not even on a lake. Look, I've had fishies nibble my tushie in the lake. It's not pleasant.

Take the time we were boating/camping/torturing me. I was around 8. We were in the boat. My father was whipping across the lake, a cigarette in one hand, and the island we are going to camp on coming perilously close. Suddenly an ash flicks into my father's eye.

He screams. My mom takes over the boat. We get to the island. My dad leaps from the boat, takes out his contact lens, the wind whips up and poof! His contact lens is gone. Somewhere in the sand.

So guess who spent hours sifting through sand to find Dad's contact lens? Yeah, that would be my family. And no, we didn't find the contact lens.

Or take the time my dad was ferrying a bunch of friends to an island for a huge 4-family camping trip. On the second trip over, he hit a rock. After the boat started to sink, the rescue boat towed my Dad to shore. I was thrilled. We spent the weekend at home by the pool.

Or the time we drove to some godforsaken place without a boat. We unpacked the car and got our bikes out. Shockingly, I was having fun. Until the ranger came around and explained how to tie our food supply up because the bears would scratch the cars up trying to get food stored inside.

Um, hello, ranger Rick? Then why tie the dang food up right next to my tent?

Then there was the time I went camping in the sixth grade with my class. Such a lovely day the first day was. The boys made hot dogs. The girls made s'mores. I threw up at 2 AM and spent the entire next day trying to get the smell of puke out of my sleeping bag. Oh, and because I had sweated on the plastic GAP bag I was using as a pillow, I spent two days with the word GAP plastered across my cheek.

Good times. And I believe the reason I was a very unpopular girl in middle school.

So when my husband and son look at me with love in their eyes and a camping trip on their minds, I simply look at them, smile and say, "No." Then I let them go off into the wilderness to fight bears and float around on boats and eat hot dogs and s'mores. And I rough it by sleeping in and going into town for a real treat. A trip to a real, live mall, where the wildest thing around is a pair of cheetah print heels.

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Laurie Sontag is a parenting guru who is navigating the wild waters of her son's teenage years by hiding in her closet waiting for puberty to be over. You can read more of her work at her blog, Manic Motherhood, follow her on Twitter or on Facebook.