I was 9 years old when my parents decided that we should go to a campground named IKEA. I read the catalogue about what IKEA hosted there and saw that there were a lot of activities that I really wanted to do including hiking, riding banana bikes, and even go-karting. I was with my family, which included my mom, dad, my little sister, and myself, and we were all ready to have some good clean fun! After packing at our house, we started driving towards our destination, which was somewhere near Las Vegas. But my hope on having fun during this trip was slowly shrinking while going through the long drive, making me more and more bored.

“When are we going to get there? This trip is taking forever Mom!” I asked.

My mom snapped, “Be patient! The trip to get to this location may take a really long time, so I would suggest that you sleep right now so that you can play later.”

Taking my mom’s advice, I decided to sleep for some time. While I was in the middle of a pretty good dream, I felt a push my shoulder and heard a voice say:

“Wake up Richard! We have to get into our cabin! We’re at the campgrounds.”

“*Moan*, I don’t want to wake up!” I grumbled.

“Come on, you’ll be able to do other stuff at the camp!”

I woke up and saw that my mom was speaking to me. Where she stood surrounding her was a beautiful environment of leaves and fall colors, making me feel happy as I thought that the boring part was over. Feeling drowsy, I slowly climbed out of the car and started walking with my family to where our cabin was. As I looked around the area, I saw a lot of small kids playing in the area, making me feel a little scared about how much fun I would have. Scanning the area and finding no one older than 5 years old, I thought to myself: “This is going to be one long vacation…”
        
      Looking around all the little kids, I realized that this place wouldn’t really be as “exciting” as I thought it was going to be. As I scanned the area, I was shocked to see that all of the attractions like banana biking and go-karting were full, and there were huge lines for each of the activities. I sighed to myself, and then inquired my mom:

“Mom, can I stay inside for the day and play some video games? This camp doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that much fun, with all of the little kids.”

My mom replied annoyed, “You should really changed your attitude, Richard! This camp is supposed to be a great place to play sports or go hiking. I want you to do something here that you wouldn’t be able to do at home, rather than playing video games. Maybe you should play basketball or something. Look, there are some kids over there.”

I looked and saw that my mom was right. There were some teenage kids playing basketball and acting as if they were pro’s at the game. Looking at this made me feel sickish, and I just gave up on the idea of having fun at this place. Literally everyone there was like 13 years old, and my mom expected me to even be competition to those guys!!! So even if they let me join in the game, they probably wouldn’t pass the ball to me.

I whispered to her, “Yeah, but mom, those kids over there look way older than me! Playing with them would not only just be embarrassing, but even if they let me play I still wouldn’t be able to get the ball that much.”

“Fine then, go to cabin with us and stay there until dinner time, while we on the other hand will have some fun hiking on the trail. Don’t start ruining our part of the trip just because of your selfishness!” my mom shouted a little bit too loud, making me feel a little embarrassed. “If you decide to change your sour attitude, then you can come out of that room as a civilized being.”

I marched into our cabin and was thinking not only about how much I hated my parents, but also how awkward the situation was with people looking at me as if I was an alien. I sucked my cheeks in and hoped for this boring trip to be over as soon as possible.

      After sitting in the room for 30 minutes, I pretty much felt as if the ratio between the amounts of kilotons compared to the bomb that blew up Hiroshima in World War II, and me, would be around 1 to 1,000,000.

“Oh my God! This is the most boring place in the universe! Why did I have to go to this stupid place anyway?” I yelled in frustration, “Why couldn’t we be at home where I could play with my friends or actually do something worthwhile!”

My patience for being at this camp had dropped down gradually, making me want to rip everything in the cabin more and more. I had nothing to do, my parents were out watching my 3 year old sister play in a sandbox while I was sitting in a hot, stuffy, and boring cabin room! In fact, the room was so boring that the biggest preoccupation I had that was in the room was looking at the sunlight move across the room! I mean, come on! So after considering the situation for some time, I decided to ask my mom to let me out. I hollered at the top of my lungs:

“Mom! Can I please come outside? I’m sorry I was being so sour about the situation. I’ll play basketball or go do something proactive instead of wanting to play video games!”

There was no answer. I wailed:

“Mom, I know you can hear me! I want to get out of this room! Can you please unlock the door so I can get out?”

Once again, there was no answer. I was so annoyed at what my parents not letting me go outside of the room! I sighed, thinking about the injustice in that situation, when I noticed something very interesting. My dad’s computer still on! I rushed over to it in amazement, thinking how it didn’t turn off when I saw that it still had quite a it of battery. At this point in my “camping” trip, I was basically desperate for any source of entertainment and so I decided to open up the computer. I logged onto my account in my dad’s computer, went on the Internet, and typed the two words “Computer Games”.

      Even though I was doing to do something that was supposed to be “fun”, ironically I was actually half-scared to death! I kept thinking that my dad would come into the room and find me playing a game, and then give me a huge punishment. I was playing the game “Pac Man” for some amount of time when suddenly I heard the footsteps of my parents coming into the cabin.

I whispered to myself, “Oh my god, Oh, my god, Oh my god! Please don’t be looking for me! Please just be looking for some of my sister’s toys!”

My dad yelled out loud, “Richard! Where are you? It’s time for dinner!”

I shouted back nervously as I was frantically closing tabs, trying to break the world record of 7-tabs-closed-in-the-shortest-amount-of-time, “I’m coming dad! Just wait for a few seconds!”

My dad clamored to me as he was walking towards my room, “No, Richard! We don’t have that type of time. Come over here at once. If were late, then they’ll run out of food at the camping ground!”

As my dad came into my compartment room, I kept feeling as if I would die of anxiety and pressure of having my dad see what I was doing. As I tried to close all of the tabs, my efforts were in vain after my dad came in and saw me with the computer and the screen displaying Pac Man when he put two-and-two together.

      To make the long story short, I ended up grounded for playing on my dad’s computer and wasting his battery. I used almost half of the battery in his computer and he was left with a really small amount. Luckily, my dad managed to find an outlet in the main office room where we checked in from the beginning, so I didn’t get in as much trouble compared to if my dad wasn’t able to find a power supply. And even though I told my parents that I was trying to shout for them and they wouldn’t listen, they still said that I shouldn’t have had the bad attitude in the first place. But from this experience at the camp what I remember most is a quote my dad told me after the situation:

“If you steal a small amount of money, because of your action you will eventually have to pay 100 times the amount of what you stole”

In the case of this story, by playing for a short amount of time on my dad’s computer, I had to face a longer punishment, which was 100x longer than how much fun I got. And in case you were wondering, I did have fun. Fun looking at people  playing basketball (ironically) while locked up a stuffy room grounded!