Marcie picked her way carefully along the path to the latrine. A large cabin set back from the others in a clearing surrounded by a grove of trees. The rain was starting to let up a little but there were still little streams of water running down the path, reflecting the beam of her flashlight. She entered the building and flicked on the lights by the door. Water had found its way into the cabin. It was puddled up near the entrance and by the showers. She walked around it to the bathroom stalls, slipped out of her slicker, entered on the the stalls and put the flashlight down at her feet. Steve had obviously neglected to repaint the bathrooms in his rush to make sure everything was operable. The inside walls of the stall and the surface of the door were covered with graffiti left by former campers.

"'Forty Yards to the Outhouse' by Willy Makeit," Marcie read. She grimaced. Come on, kids. You can do better than that.

She checked to make sure the seat was clean. Well, she thought, this will probably be tomorrow's detail. Steve would probably have them in here, scrubbing down the floor and the stalls again after the rain and painting over all the the old graffiti, which would only provide a fresh clean irresistible surface for the new campers who would arrive at the end of next week.

She wondered what the point was. People were going to draw on walls no matter what you did. It was a way of saying 'I was here.' Some called it "vandalism." Others labeled it "inner city art," like a writer she saw on THE TONIGHT SHOW who said it was, what was it? "A new form of urban abstract expressionism" or something like that. But the bottom line was that people, especially kids, needed attention; a way of making their presence felt, A way of marking out their turf. Adults got to put personalized license plates on their cars. Signs with their names on their houses and front lawns and mailboxes. Personalized checks and grave business cards and stationary. Brass nameplates on their office desks and plastic name plates on their office doors. Initials on their briefcases and monograms on their pocket handkerchiefs. It was all the same thing, more or less; a way of establishing your identity, of saying 'this is me. I did this. I was here.' Its most common in big cities. Graffiti is rarely seen in small towns and when it is, as in this case, it was probably done by someone from the city. In small towns, identity was not much of a problem. People knew each other. They took the time to say your name and say hello. In a big city, you often got lost in the crowd.

The best attempt at a solution to the problem she had ever seen was in a bar she went to once.