Thank you, Chao Camp:

Fireworks and darts.
Walks on the levee with Mad.
Outdoor showers and gossiping through another bottle of wine.
The Poor Bastards, and their band with lots of heart.
Teasing stee for being such a city boy.
Disappearing behind camo.
Crawfish. Lots of crawfish.
Chris jamming on the drum machine.
Our amazing rendition of “Creep.”
Six computers open at once, all searching for the next song to play.
Lynda’s cooking, and Vince’s cooking, and Al charading Patrick Dempsey.
Knowing the name “Nagib Mahfuz.”

It was four days of hanging out. That’s what we did. We sat around, played some games, sang some songs, did a little walking and a whole lot of eating. I got to see a little bit of stee as a country boy — shooting fireworks, hanging out in trucks listening to sports radio, ordering his hash browns smothered and covered — and by now we’ve got a bit of a twang in our voices, the y’alls flow freely, and it takes us about two hours to get ready to go anywhere, because it ain’t like we got nowhere we need to be right now.

Vince took the afternoon off so we could spend our last few hours together, eating pizza and shooting darts. So I gotta go before we have to hug these Chaos goodbye.