Saturday, September 3, 2011

short story series: the great flood



it's labor day weekend and i am looking forward to a relaxing time spent with friends and family. i'll kick it off with another short story. enjoy!

the great flood
{background: one summer i had the privilege of serving as one of pine cove camp’s slaves. ok not really a slave, but my job, along with the group of girls i served with (aka baby ruths), was to do all the behind-the-scenes grunt work. you name it, we did it – cleaning out toilets (even plunging the yuck-o ones), picking up dead fish on the shores of the lake, dumpster diving (ahem…cleaning out the dumpsters), serving the meals, washing windows, and picking up all the leftover scraps of trash. sound fun? it actually was one of the most influential and memorable five weeks of my life. i learned more about myself, my relationship with Christ, and my attitude as a christian during that sweet time.}

moooving on. that particular summer, pine cove suffered from colossal amounts of rain (i’m not sure i even know what that is after this dry-as-a-bone summer in texas!). so much so, that the plumbing was having some serious issues. the sewage was particularly fond of coming up out of the drains in the bathrooms. disgusting? quite.
one night after quite the long evening of deep cleaning the kitchen, the baby ruths and i were showering before bed. while i was lathering up my hair with shampoo, i hear someone yell “everyone evacuate the bathroom….QUICK!!!” remember the sewage issues? yep, nasty foul-smelling, brown water started gurgling out of the drains at a very rapid pace. in that state of emergency, i didn’t even think about rinsing my hair. Instead, i jumped out of the shower, threw on some clothes, and pretended like i was in a kung-fu samuri movie as i dashed around the brown puddles, hoisting my junk off the ground and onto my bunkbed.
the flood was getting so bad, it was time to evacuate the cabins and find a new place to sleep. at about 1:30am, our sleepy and disgusted selves had to creep through camp balancing our mattresses on our heads. it almost felt like we were evacuees on a march to a new home, leaving our old ones to desolation and destruction. it wasn’t that bad, but it was a pretty sad walk.
at about 1:45am, when we safetly arrived to our new sleeping area (the nurses office), i realized my hair felt a bit stiffer than its usual soft and smoothe self. it also had an unnaturally strong herbal essence scent to it. it was then that i realized my shampoo had dried to a crisp in my hair. too sleepy to care, i laid my head on my mattress and fell asleep, dreaming of brown, foul-smelling waterfalls washing away my clothes. at least my hair was extra clean, right?

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