8/16/2011

Camp of the Lost

Story Sent in by Nick:

One summer in my early 20s, Rachel contacted me off of a dating site, saying that I looked familiar. She listed several places from which we might have known each other, but aside from living in the same city, nothing else she mentioned was familiar. Based on her initial message, though, we struck up a conversation, one that finally led to a date.

I took her out to dinner, where we had a nice experience, although she seemed to have decided that I had attended her local summer camp, Camp Buchanan, which I never, ever had.

"I've got a great idea!" she said as dinner was coming to a close, "After dinner, let's go there! To Camp Buchanan! We can park our cars on a nearby street and sneak onto the property."

I liked the idea, and so we did it. It was a nice place, from what I could tell in the dark. There were abundant trees, little ranch buildings, and big fields.

She led me to a swing set not too far from a collection of swimming pools.

While we were on the swings, she turned to me and said with a smile, "By the way: I've figured out where I know you from."

"Where?" I was eager to find out.

She said, "Here! Camp Buchanan! We were campers and friends together, over 10 years ago."

I replied, "I said before: I've never been here. Sorry."

She said, "We were campers here. Try to remember."

"I swear to God, I've never set foot in this place."

"The annual dance was held here for the first time when we were campers. It was so awkward! Remember?"

"I've never been here. Really."

"That's the first time I remember seeing you."

I sighed. "Rachel, this is my first time here. I've never been here before, ever. I spent my summers at a camp in North Carolina."

She said, "I imagined what my kids with someone else would look like for the first time with you as the father. It was you."

"It wasn't."

She stared at me, her eyes wider than I had ever seen them. "It was. You... were... here."

"I wasn't. I'm sorry."

She jumped off the swing and said, "If you're not going to play him, then I want to be alone. Have a good night... and life, okay?"

I stopped swinging. "What?"

She said, "If you're not even going to help me, then we're calling it a night, and I... can't see you again. Okay?"

"Uh... sure. Okay."

"Are you sure? Last chance to... play the lost."

I stood up off the swing. "I'm sure, but we can still have a nice night, can't we? We can—"

"I'll be safer this way!" she said, then skipped off, toward the swimming pools, and into the night. I didn't follow her, and I returned to my car and drove back home.

As she had promised, I didn't hear from her again.

12 comments:

  1. I'll say it before Howie or someone else does:

    all you had to do was pretend to be some guy, and you could have gotten laid in an abandoned summer camp. Probably all over the property. Yeah, she's mentally imbalanced, but dude...think of the story you could have told!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Claire...you are a smart, smart lady..err cat.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sometimes you dodge crazy, sometimes it dodges you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. .. and then she would have stalked him and demanded he change his name to the other guy's, dress like him, act like him, marry her, and make her the beautiful babies she had pictured.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A bad case of the "I want you play along with my fantasy, but won't clue you in at any time".

    And yes, you probably would have gotten laid ALL OVER that summer camp. Until Mr. Voorhees took care of you, anyways.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I like how you apparently left her at the campsite, too. heh

    ReplyDelete
  7. ^ She ran away from him and made it very clear that she was not interested in seeing him again since he wouldn't play along with her game. What was he supposed to do?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Howie: I am Nikki. Claire is the armadillo. Tasha is the cat.

    ReplyDelete
  9. ^Your profile says that you're the armadillo.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Maybe she just loves roleplaying and wanted to see if he would play a long? I would love to see the rebuttal of this one....

    ReplyDelete
  11. Ipdar: My blog is from the perspective of my stuffed armadillo. You will see that Nikki also posts blogs. I didn't want to make another Google account just for the travelogue, so I got lazy and just switched things around.

    Also the phrase "armadillo travel correspondent" makes me laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Yeah, it seems like she was just trying to role play. She seemed a little odd, but certainly not unhinged (especially by this site's standards)

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Content Policy

A Bad Case of the Dates reserves the right to publish or not publish any submitted content at any time, and by submitting content to A Bad Case of the Dates, you retain original copyright, but are granting us the right to post, edit, and/or republish your content forever and in any media throughout the universe. If Zeta Reticulans come down from their home planet to harvest bad dating stories, you could become an intergalactic megastar. Go you!

A Bad Case of the Dates is not responsible for user comments. We also reserve the right to delete any comments at any time and for any reason. We're hoping to not have to, though.

Aching to reach us? abadcaseofthedates at gmail dot com.