Just before I moved to The Gambia (West Africa) for six months, I fell head over heals for a guy named Peter. For those of you who have been reading me for a long time, you know there’s MUCH more to that story than what I’m letting on, but I won’t go into it because it sounds trashy and do I really need the leftover Sundry Internet Trolls having more ammunition? I don’t think so.
Anyway, Peter and I maintained our long distance relationship the entire time I was gone
[Sidenote: I admit that while I was in The Gambia I had an enormous crush on a guy named Nate, who had little time nor feelings for me, but we did spend one evening together on a "date" (but he was aware that I had a boyfriend and it wasn't meant to be anything but friends having dinner) at a restaurant at the beach. We had dinner and then we went swimming, in the dark. And we did this because there were "Bioluminescent Dinoflagellates," the glowing plankton (a la The Beach), and it ranks as probably the most magical experiences of my life, up until I got pregnant. It was the "first date" to end all dates, and the one that will never be beaten.]
Anyway, when my time in The Gambia was done, Peter flew from Halifax and we met in London, England for a two month stint backpacking in Europe (my third time). We flew to southern Portugal, rented a car and camped out for a couple of weeks. Peter and I started arguing almost immediately, and for our entire 1.5 year relationship had a very, very turbulent time. But we were in love, and within four days of reuniting, he asked me to marry him (DURING SEX! ugh) (hahahhaha! I must be AWESOME in bed!)
We would spend some nights trying to sleep in our TINY rental car, and some nights we’d brave the cold outside (we were travelling in February and March), and I remember one time we found a campground that offered nudist plots! We decided that we were not interested in camping out there (though, we did slow down and take a very long time passing by each occupied camp site!), and chose a secluded plot, parked the car and set up our tent. It was pretty cold that night, so we decided to light a fire, but neither of us had any paper to light to start it. We searched through both of our backpacks and around the campsite, but because it had just rained, everything outside was wet. Peter looked in the glove compartment of the car and VOILA! he found a notebook that he brought with him for taking notes- he’d had it since the days he was in the army.
He ripped out a couple of pages and we spent some time making the best wood pyramid we could out of anything small and dry that we could find, and Peter took his lighter and tried to light the paper that was at the bottom of our structure. Nothing happened. The paper didn’t light. He tried again, this time with a different piece of paper. And again, and again. He was getting really, really annoyed and tore down our miniature structure and took out the paper and held the flame right underneath it. Nothing happened.
That’s when he realized that he was trying to light fireproof Canadian Army-issued paper.
We spent the night in the car.
