#idontgethashtags...

I really don't. I've never felt so old in my life. I used to be "hip" and "with it." Even if I wasn't right on top of it, I could pick it up without too much trouble, but this hashtag thing just confuses me.

What is the point? Didn't the statement made before the hashtag make clear my thoughts? Is the hashtag just a brief reconfirmation of my previous comment? When did I stop being cool?

The thing with the hashtag is, I can't be sure if I'm using it correctly, though I suspect there aren't any rules anyway. It's a "make it up as you go along" type activity.

Whatever.

Last weekend my children and I went camping at Caddo Lake state park. It was...wet. Really, really wet. I can't remember the last time it rained, but we experienced a gully washer on Thursday evening.

Thankfully, we were able to get our tents (we went with another family) up before the downpour began. Also we managed to score a site with an enormous pad that fit both of our rather large tents thereby saving them from washing away in the resulting flood. That is only a small exaggeration.

However, the rain ruined our chances of dinner by campfire, so we ended up in town at Wendy's in front of a faux fire. It had to do.

We also discovered our tent is not waterproof, a knowledge we came to after the rain had passed. Upon entering our canvas abode we found several puddles had formed on top of every single sleeping bag. That's okay, it was too hot for sleeping bags that night anyway.

The Wendy's was right next to a Wal-Mart so we were able to get a couple of light blankets to cover ourselves for the night. The next morning we hung our sleeping bags out to get less wet. It was all we could hope for in the swampy air.

Everything works out.

We were under the understanding that there were canoes and swimming at this park, but when we got there we were informed that, in fact, there were no canoes. As for swimming, there was no designated swimming area, so we were cautioned to take care when swimming as we could encounter glass, fishing hooks, or...alligators. That's right, alligators.

We opted not to swim there.

Instead we went to Atlanta state park to swim at the "sandy beach." We were underwhelmed by the minitude of "sandy beach." It was perhaps six feet wide and three feet from the water.

But it was sandy.

The children were excited to swim out to the buoys until they realized they could still touch the bottom. Oh well, less of a chance for drowning. As we were so close to Louisiana, we decided to cross the border for some ice cream so that was fun.

It was a lot of fun, mostly because we were with another family. Which brings me to the last in a long line of comical experience. We were told the campsite we had chosen was near the highway so there "might be some traffic noise."

Wow. That was an incredible understatement.

We could not hear ourselves speak anytime a truck roared by, and they roared by a lot. Also, there was a train.

My grampa would send us VHS copies of old cartoons when I was a kid. One time he sent us a tape of Huckleberry Hound, a blue dog in a straw hat who is slow of speech, and perpetual positivity. In one episode he was tending to a set of pranking twins. They locked him out of a room that he used a battering ram to get through. They opened the door as he came barreling through then opened a second door that led outside. He was on the second floor and as he fell he said, "lucky for me, there's a swimming pool."

As he reached the pool, one of the boys pulled the plug to the pool and as only happens in cartoons, the pool was empty by the time Huckleberry hit the ground. At which point he says, "lucky for me the pool is empty. I might have drowned."

I try to emulate ol' Huckleberry hound. This weekend gave me a lot of practice.