The Curious Incident of the Camel in the Daytime

One thing led to another, and then the camel threw me off.

The comedian Brian Regan has a piece in which he bemoans the laziness of people who use "one thing led to another" as a suitable replacement for chronological description. It's not laziness that drives me to start this way, but rather a befuddlement as to exactly how I was sitting in my apartment one minute and was lying in a field cradling my injured loins after being bucked off a camel ten minutes later.

By this time Elder Vankampen had been been transferred the Indian reservation somewhere and a new companion had come to replace him. Elder Patten had just returned from a four-month medical leave and I was his first companion since his doctor at home had declared him fit again for missionary service. His mysterious illness continued, however, leaving us stranded indoors for several hours a day. (Missionaries are never to leave their assigned companions, except for emergencies, bathroom breaks, and companionship exchanges with other missionaries.) In a normal apartment, this would have been only a minor issue, but our apartment was a converted horse stable. Though we had carpet, running water and electricity, the swamp cooler only served to waft in the scent of manure, the mice found easy passages between the adjoining stables and our quarters, and both of our immediate neighbors were horses who sometimes succumbed to midnight urges to copulate with their doors.

Our landlord Senator Komadina kept several exotic pets, and one day Elder Patten's illness and the resulting house arrest got to me. I found myself climbing bereft of will over the camels' enclosure, a towel wrapped around my head like a turban in a most culturally insensitive fashion. I clambered up a fallen tree and used a branch to lure the larger of the two camels, James, to my position. Once his proximity was suitable to allow for maximum accessibility, I jumped between his humps.

The ride was exhilarating, if a little brief. About four seconds after my mounting of the beast, he finally succeeded in dislodging me. I slid over the back hump. I found that parts of me that are not configured to come into repeated and forceful contact with camel humps, but those parts seemed to be placed so that such contact is inevitable if one chooses to ride a camel. As I struck the ground, my mind was less on my bruised backside and more on those fragile parts that the camel had so callously banged between its humps. Elder Patten, well enough to leave the apartment and spectate, showed his concern for my possible injuries by taking photos of me at every angle.

I never rode another camel my entire mission.