Stupid Fast

Chapter 5: I MEAN, MAN! I USED TO LOVE SUMMER!




I have very fond memories actually.

Every summer before this summer, we’d go camping at least once. For example, the summer after freshman year, Jerri took me and Andrew camping at Wyalusing State Park, right where the Wisconsin River cuts the state and hits the Mississippi. Where there are really high bluffs and huge trees and watery sand bars and little streams that look like mountain streams on TV flowing down the bluffs and ravines that cut through the forest and hiking trails right through it all. We spent two full days exploring.

Even though I hadn’t hit my growth spurt and hadn’t become stupid fast, I was already a jumper. I’d leap across ravines and Jerri would shout “Felton’s a bobcat!” and Andrew, who apparently didn’t think athletic prowess was bad for a young man at that time, would ask me to do it again because I looked so cool in flight.

At night, Jerri made campfires, and we roasted marshmallows, and we sat around and sang while she played guitar. She sang me “You Are My Sunshine” like twenty times, which I really liked, and all three of us sang “Rocky Mountain High” and “Country Road.”

Jerri is a great singer. She sounds professional. “Love me some John Denver,” she’d say. She’s a good mom too. She’s really been a good mom. Really. She took us camping every summer before this summer. And I’ve loved summer.