Tenting Today

A young couple has graduated from a middling state college, and seeing nothing attractive about the workplace or graduate school, they elect to live in a tent in a public campground, getting by on small remittances from indulgent parents. The slacker narrator says that a work ethic, requiring punctuality, subordination, and allegiance to the logo, is beyond his tepid, self-involved character, and that it would be better all around for him to live quietly with his vegan girlfriend without raising dust or making a smudge. Too many busy strivers are soiling the earth, he tells his puzzled dad. He needn't be another work beast or donkey engine or punk go-fer answering to a cubicle overlord, if the dad will just deposit a small monthly sum in the young man's checking account. Although the youth is passive and soft spoken, his view is counter-American, and undermines good order and hierarchy. As slacker boy's mom says, if everybody were like him there would be no pyramids, the Great Wall would not be seen from space, and Notre Dame couldn't hold a joyful noise, for lack of brick makers.