Flashback #1

Ah, the hammock, thinnest couch in the world, bed that never touches the floor, cozy cuddle sack, swing for kids large and small, book-reading assistant, perfect cloud watching positioner, and not insignificantly, dealer of trauma of the long lasting degree.

Hammock Phobia: a condition in which a person is totally terrified of hammocks, although they may still partake in the activity of hammocking. This fear may be of rational, irrational, or unearthly origins.

When I lay in hammock, I am endlessly torn between ultimate relaxation and an intense urge to put a mattress or at least my shoes under where my ass would crack against the floor should one end or the other come unattached. I see and feel over and over the possiblilties and try to angle myself in order to minimize damage should such a thing occur. One day, I think it was the day before yesterday, it all came back to me...

I am 11 or 12. At the fifth week Camp Gold session at The Lair of Bear. I am wearing hideous super short black shorts. One of the families ( I think the one who always had the Mai Thai party) in the big tents near the stage has set up one of those big, white, cotten, fat-string hammocks with the wooden bars at each end to keep it spread out. It is screwed into two trees with big eye screws. There are 3 or 4 of us on the hammock, but two of them are pretty little so we are more like two adults. Somebody is pushing us, we swing big but it doesn't feel too big. We are having fun. All of a sudden I am flying through the air and I land on tree stump that has been recently broken off so that the edges are raw and sticking straight up. The wind is knocked out of me, which gives me a pause before I feel the cuts and splinters on my back. Somebody's mother comes running over and mothers me over to the doctor's hut. I am obviously fine because I walk there, but she makes me go anyway. Good I guess.

One of the eye screws pulled out of the tree. I feel like that could happen again at any moment. But now that I have remembered why, I can assess the quality of suspension and try to relax without images of splintering tree stumps, shattered tailbones, cracked elbows, or bruises of magnanamous proportions. It could still happen, yes, but I could also get hit by a bus when I step out of this internet icebox cafe. Maybe I should just stay in here... they do have free coffee. And candy bars. And endless house music.