I was almost a teenager when my family decided to go camping at Cranhill. We stayed there for four days; Saturday-Tuesday. We were in a cramped little campsite where you could see what about 10 different families were doing by just standing in a single place. Dirt lingered on my skin, the smell of burning wood stained the clothes I wore, screaming children a nearby playground pierced my ears, and worst of all, mosquitos would swarm me like fans would a celebrity. To my 12 year old self, camping was the worst thing ever. I was in a bad mood since day one of the trip.

Monday was a particularly rough day. We had to move campsites, so pretty early in the morning we started packing up and that is never a fun time.  Once we packed up we literally moved two spots down and had to unpack everything. Our new spot was even closer to the noisy playground. Along with that, we were now next to a public lake access so I had the joy of people walking basically right through our site all the time. After we were finished unpacking at setting up our new site, I went to play frisbee golf with my brothers. In the process I was attacked by deer flies and mosquitos. I went back to the campsite in a pretty bad mood. I was getting off my bike when my mom announced that her friend’s family was coming to visit us for the day. This sounds like a good thing but trust me, it wasn’t. Lets just say the people that were coming were not my favorite.

Finally, after their exhausting visit, they went home. It was around dinner time when they left and by this point I was straight up crabby. I wore a scowl on my face and “stomp-walked” wherever I went.

“Let’s go get ice cream.” My sister said to me.
“No” I yelled back. “I don't feel like it.”
“Why don't you want ice cream?” She asked in reply.

“Just because I don't. Okay? Now leave me alone.” The conversation continued along those lines for another minute or so. I was really snotty towards her and yelled at her just because she asked me a question.

The lesson I learned that day was I can’t go off on people just because I had a bad day. Especially people who didn’t even do anything to irritate me in the first place. I need to learn how to shake off the bad stuff and move on. No one wants to hear me complain and watch me mope around because a few little things got to me. I learned that day about how to handle situations like that differently the next time. That experience helped shape me into a better person today.