Sometimes, if you live there long enough, you start to smell like your hometown. In 1979, Santa Cruz, California smelled like the ocean, dewy mountain trails, and old-growth redwoods, but it also totally reeked of body odor.

I didn’t even wear deodorant yet, but my brother and I made a pact early on to never smell as bad as our parents and their crunchy friends. Little did we know that certified organic body odor was soon to be the very least of our concerns.

That spring, our parents split up. My brother and I stayed with my dad and my mom moved our baby sister and herself into a tent at the local campground. Yes, a tent, the kind most families camp in once or twice a year on vacation.

Although my dad pretended to be fine with it and my brother kept his thoughts to himself, I was definitely not OK with the situation.

So on my tenth birthday, which fell, ironically enough, three days after the meltdown of nuclear reactor number two at Three Mile Island, I staged a meltdown of my very own outside my mom’s tent. Vowing to never sleep in her “stinky tent house” again, no matter how tastefully appointed it was — and honestly, it was shockingly nice in there with my sister’s antique dresser and plants — I stormed off to sulk under the nearest tree.

Stunned by my epic outburst, my mom and her new neighbors looked up from their bean bags and half-eaten bowls of berries and granola to stare hard at the surly preteen in their mix.

And then, as if on cue, a passing seagull crapped squarely onto my forehead and disappeared into the fog towards the beach.

As warm, eggy-white bird droppings ran down my face, I scowled, clamped my mouth shut, and ran off towards the communal showers by the creek. With the riotous laughter of the entire campground ringing in my ears, I knew then and there that the forest itself had spoken. Resistance was futile, and any further whining about my mother’s current living condition was to be met with swift and brutal karmic retribution from above.

Needless to say, I never complained about that freaking tent again.