Our three boys spent the last week off at church camp. The
two younger ones were here in town, while Son Number One went all the way down
to Los Angeles with his high school group.
He and I got up before dawn on Saturday to head off to the
busses. His bag was ninety-nine percent packed the night before. When we woke
up, he was supposed to brush his teeth and then pack his toiletries and his
phone charger.
Off we went to the church to get him loaded up onto his bus.
“Do you have everything?” I asked him.
His ears filtered my question through his small, inoperative
fourteen-year-old brain, and he answered, “Yes! Quit asking me!”
I wrestled a hug out of him and sent him on his way. Fast
forward to last Thursday afternoon when I picked him up. We had no contact with
him all week, since the youth group leaders took everyone’s phones away on the
bus trip there, and gave them back on the bus trip home. That made packing his
phone charger the morning of the trip kind of a moot point.
What wasn’t supposed to be a moot point was packing his
toiletries. As we were walking to the car and he was busy answering my
questions about the week with super-descriptive one-word answers, he suddenly
remembered something noteworthy.
“I forgot my toiletries bag, so I couldn’t brush my teeth
all week.”
*record scratch*
“What?” I asked, hoping I had misheard his incredibly long
sentence.
“Yeah, I totally thought I packed it, but it wasn’t there.”
“I watched you pack it,” I said.
“I know, I thought I did. I thought I put it in the same
pocket as my phone charger.”
“I think you did, too. Did you take everything out of the
bag to look?”
“Trust me, dad, I looked a bunch of times.”
“So, you just didn’t brush your teeth all week?” I asked,
still not having fully wrapped my brain around what was coming out of his
mouth, besides the halitosis. “Did you at least floss?”
“I chewed a lot of gum.”
Oh, great, those four out of five dentists will be thrilled.
*sound of a blood vessel bursting in my brain*
“Did you tell somebody?”
“I’m not going to use someone else’s toothbrush. That’s
gross.”
*sound of an even larger blood vessel bursting in my brain* “Um…
not to use someone else’s toothbrush. To get you your own!”
“No. No one’s going to have an extra toothbrush, dad. Geez.”
*more blood vessels breaking, calming breaths*
“Why didn’t you at least ask someone to borrow floss? That’s
a one-time use product.”
“I told you, I chewed a lot of gum.”
“Where did you get all this gum?”
“Our group leader took us on a walk to a gas station to get
snacks. I bought a two-liter of root beer, too.”
“That’s nice. Do you know what else they sometimes sell at
gas station convenience stores?... You know what, never mind.”
I opted to simply drive out of the parking lot in silence
and continue the silence all the way home, for fear of having a full-blown
stroke while operating a moving vehicle. I tried to think about dogs playing
fetch. That’s a nice thought.
When we got home, he grabbed his sleeping bag and pillow and
asked if I would get his duffel bag.
“Sure,” I said, still thinking about Labs and border collies
leaping in the air for sticks and Frisbees. I carried it by the shoulder strap
and was halfway to the front door when I looked down and saw it.
*second record scratch of the day*
I walked into the house where my wife was already getting
super-descriptive one-word answers to her questions.
“Please tell me this whole thing was just some kind of elaborate
and really stupid joke,” I said, falsely hopeful. “You brushed your teeth all
week, right?”
*first record scratch of the day for my wife*
“You didn’t brush your teeth?” she asked.
“No, I couldn’t. I forgot my toiletry bag.”
“This one?” I asked, trying very hard not to have a totally paralyzing
stroke, even though I was not driving anymore. “This one, here, in the end
pocket of your duffel bag? The MESH end pocket!? The pocket on the outside of
the bag that I can see right into without opening the bag or even needing to
unzip it? This toiletry bag right here under your phone charger!?!?!?”
“What? There is no way that was in there the whole time. I
totally looked, like, a bunch of times.”
As I stared into my wife’s beautiful eyes for some shred of
logic or reason, I heard the sweet, welcomed sound of the rest of the blood
vessels in my brain exploding.
No, no. Don’t call me an ambulance. Just get me some gum.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen
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