Help, I'm Deaf

Went camping this weekend.
It dumped rain, so the entire thing ended up being the Hemingway camping experience where we all stood around the lake with our grim faces and ropey forearms wearing thick sweaters and acting like it didn't bother us that we were wet and cold and being eaten alive by mosquitoes because we were alive and it was more than we could say for the mosquitoes as we swatted them from our ropey forearms with our sinewy hands and looked out over the picnic tables piled high with soggy food and dripping dishes where we had just eaten dutifully but without relish because we had forgotten the relish and the mustard besides. The women kept their strong silent backs to the men while the men stood around the fire ring feeling hopeless because not only could they not get the fire to light but they had forgotten to bring any wood which didn't matter anyway because the wood would have mouldered away with the passage of the time that it took the women with their strong silent backs to finish the dishes and make the coffee which they poured into cups and let go cold before bringing it out to the men who stood in a circle reveling in their shame. And back in the tent we lay in the darkness listening to the rain and the acorns and the squirrel turds hitting the top of the tent and wondered how long it would be before the water began creeping into our sleeping bags and wondered whether the children really did not notice that they were wet and cold or whether they were just trying to put a brave face on it so as not to remind us of our failures and thereby to make us feel them much more acutely even though they were not really our failures so much as the failures of a God who never seems to take into account our vacation plans.
Man, I love camping.