During a camping trip at the beach, I seriously regretted choosing that day. But then again, maybe not. It was CRAZY fun.

It was midnight, and I was lying awake in a tent on a Boy Scout camping trip. There were three other people stuck in the same tent I was in: Mike, Rocky, and me.

I was fuming there, being mad at myself for picking the one closest to the ocean, because the wind was blowing like crazy from that direction. Raining, too.

In the daytime, it seemed great. Closest to the ocean meant better sound reception. I could hear the waves better. I knew from my book of relaxing that I bought that waves could calm the soul.

But now, you couldn’t even hear the waves, because the wind had drowned it. Furthermore, every two seconds the whole side of the tent leaned towards me and covered me up and I would know what it felt like to have polyester slapped on my face. Mike would giggle, “Where’s Brad? You don’t suppose he was swallowed by the wall of a tent, do you?”

I kicked the wall, causing the whole tent to shake. Then I got my camping chair and set it up against the wall, hoping my chair would hold the wall up. It didn’t work.

Rocky and Mike were awake and sharing stories. I wasn’t listening, but watching the wall squish my poor chair until it got flatter and flatter until eventually my chair was a pancake.

I got up to resettle it. Then I noticed the corner of the tent.

It was loose, and it looked like it had just dislodged. I held it up. “Hey, guys! Whoever set up our tent didn’t do it very well because—”

I didn’t finish, because at that moment, the entire half of the tent was lifted upwards by a sudden big draft of wind. My chair was thrown into the other corner, my camping pad rolled up again, and we all screamed.

Mike scrambled to one corner and shouted at me, “You weigh down that corner…”

As I scrambled to weigh down another corner, suddenly I noticed that this corner was loose too!

“This corner is loose—”

Wow, I was unlucky. When I had arrived at camp, the tents were already set up. The camp leader had pointed to this one, and said, “This is yours.”

It looked nice, but that was how it looked. In the daytime, where there was little wind. Now I wished I noticed earlier!

The next tent could even be without stakes, and they could be playing cards, because we suffering (well, I was) for them!

One of the adults came over, shielding himself from the rain, holding a book. A bright orb appeared in the wall as he stepped closer with his flashlight.

“What is going on, boys?” he asked us as a few more adults came over, asking the same question. “Why are you not sleeping?”

“SOS!” Rocky cried.

“Our tent is coming out!” Mike shouted.

“Two stakes are out!” I exclaimed.

“What?” He asked again.

We repeated, but halfway through, I think he got our point because the tent lifted and threw us all into a corner.

“Whoa! Boys, give me a corner inside there, will you? I’ll go and hammer it down and add some more stakes.” he said, and grabbed a hammer and an extra bag of stakes.

The next fifteen minutes, we rested inside as we heard the plink, plink of the hammers, the drip, drip of the rain as Mike in the middle got soaked, and the swoosh of the ocean. I could tell where they were working without the hammer sounds, because two or three flashlights were shining as they plink, plink and plinked the walls down.

When they were finished, I was happy with the results. The wall was now no longer leaning on me, as they had fixed it.

But I realized my camping pad was completely wet. I had not noticed, busy kicking the wall and weighing down corners. I unrolled it and tried to get on the dry side the best I could.

We started to get bored, but just then, Mike cried, “It’s leaking!” He pointed his ultra-bright thirteen-bulb flashlight at the roof.

The whole room was exploded with white light. I grabbed the flashlight and turned it off. Rocky opened up his eyes finally.

“This is Eyewitness News! There is a leak on the roof of our tent! Lets take a look at—”

“I like cheese.” Rocky said randomly, and then laughed.

“Okay, lets let Rocky who gave a totally random comment tell us about it…”

But at that moment, we heard a voice outside our window hiss, “If you make one more noise, you are going to be in big trouble.”

So that night I had only one hour of sleep.

On a really wet camping pad.