I’ve Got Your Didgeridoo

It was pitch black at the campground on Saturday night in Gore, VA, and you could really see the stars, which is something special for someone living in the DC Burbs. I left the concert area to go to the tent to get a beer from the cooler, and I used my portable lantern to illuminate ground hazards like holes, puddles, snakes and the like. I put the lantern on my table at my camp while I fished out the cold beer and I heard a faint call. It was a female’s voice.

“Hey! Yeah you with the light!”

I looked around with a little confusion because I couldnt see anything past the glow of my own lantern. The voice sounded like it was coming from a distant camp site that had a camp fire burning merrily. I took a sip of the beer and picked up the lantern and shone it in that direction with a puzzled look on my face. Was someone in trouble?

“Hey, over here,” came the voice again. I walked in the direction of the voice, and out of the darkness loped a scrawny malnourished woman in dirty coveralls, bare feet and the most hideous tangle of unkempt matted hair and dreadlocks I had seen since Jason and his Argonauts defeated the Medusa. Horrified at her appearance, I asked if she was okay or needed help.

She seemed very happy that I had heard her cries in the dark and she asked in an excited voice, “Do you have a didgeridoo?”

I was confused. This dirty waif of a woman called to me from over 100 yards away to ask if I was in possession of an Australian aboriginal musical instrument? Was she kidding me, I demanded to know.

“No, I’m serious, its very important,” she responded, almost hurt. I told her that I thought she was in some kind of trouble and that her request to provide said musical instrument was absurd. She thanked me anyways, and galloped back into the darkness, apparently on a quest for more rare musical instruments.

It struck me as ridiculous that anyone would completely forego modern luxuries such as showers or a hairbrush. Maybe she was living like an aborigine and she wanted the tribal musical instrument to complete her fantasy. But anyone that shuns the healthiest and simplest forms of modernity in the 21st century is more than a little kooky, especially if by doing so it is designed to give others the impression that they are living a special lifestyle. I guarantee that the wild stinky girl had a CD player and a CD collection. She can go to the store for batteries or can find an electrical outlet to play her songs. But she can’t find soap, a hairbrush or a mirror?

Didgeridoo? No, didgeri-don’t.