Home field advantage

            I am sure that there are many who would turn up their nose at living in my little camper.  Indeed, many snide comments have been made about just how claustrophobic they would be if they had to be in there even one minute.  Sure there are drawbacks. There is the limited storage space so, gosh, you can only carry what you actually need and not what you kind of like, want, might need, just in case and for an emergency bring along.  There is the risk of being exposed to temperatures outside of the range of, say, 72-76 degrees Fahrenheit.  There is the occasional inconvenience of figuring out where to park your house.  There is no squeezing into a tight spot or subtly leaving it somewhere hoping that no one notices.  Of course, it has limited guest rooms so that may be an advantage or disadvantage depending on who’s invited.

            But there are so many advantages to carrying your own house with you.  Housekeeping is greatly abbreviated.  I require neither vacuum nor ironing board. I simply haul it over to the car wash and spray it down once a week just like the car. I am greatly enamored with the benefits of a high-pressure wash.  I feel like more things could benefit from its thoroughness including bathrooms and small children.

            Second, you never have to check into a hotel and wonder how clean the sheets are.  How many studies have been done now showing that this is one of the most disgusting things we expose ourselves to on a regular basis?  We all go in with the delusion that this is a private room and, thus, it must also be sterile. And this is coming from someone whose favorite things to do is pop abscesses.  At least in the camper you already know it has been a month since the last time you were willing to part with 16 quarters but you also know no one else had been dirtying the sheets.

            Finally and most important, there is the bliss of having your own bathroom.  Yes, you can sit there as long as you want without arousing suspicion or wondering if the person next to you will leave first.  If you run out of paper, it is your own damn fault.  The only person that peed on the seat was you.  And of course the big bonus is that when in North Carolina you can skip the genital exam.  But really it comes down to not having to wait, for anyone or anything.  Let’s admit that the last thing you want to do when you have to go to the bathroom is wait in line, find out you need a key, wait in another line to get that key, wait in line with the key to have some mother with three kids beg to go in front of you because her 4 year old can’t hold it any longer so that when you get there you have a wet seat where her three toddlers missed and the bathroom looks like it has been toilet papered by teenage hooligans so that there is none actually on the roll.  I no longer participate in the bathroom circus.  I have peed in rest stops. I have peed while pumping my gas.  I have peed in the parking lot after getting my groceries.  I have simply pulled over to the side of the road and peed.  I consider this a HUGE upgrade from the tree that I have historically settled for.

            While I probably won’t make it onto MTV’s Cribs or be the highlight of the historical home tour, I will never have to stand in line for a dirty throne and that, my friends, is living large.