Friday, July 20, 2007

Ummm…. Derrrr?

Lucas called last night. He was at band camp. He’s taken up both the clarinet and the alto saxophone. He’s actually quite good, even though at times it sound like he’s trying to strangle a duck while he’s “trying to find the high notes.” Yes, find the high notes, like he keeps them in a special place inside the length of the clarinet and blowing really hard will help shake those troublesome notes loose and free them to waddle around the halls in search of their ancient atonal, yet squeaky master.

The conversation from Band Camp goes something like this:

“Hi, Mom”

“Hi, Lucas! How is Band Camp?”

“Fine. I guess.”

“Uh-oh. What’s wrong, my friend?”

“I forgot my clarinet and my sax. So I need you to bring them to me.”

“Nu-uh! You did not!”

“Yep, I did. So how soon can you get it to me?” (ed. note: Band Camp is at least 45 minutes away and it’s already half over by this time.)

“OK, um, well, I guess we can bring them up to you.”

“I’m just kidding! I didn’t forget my instruments! I’m not dumb, you know!”

“You’re a laugh riot, Lucas. A flat out, stomp on your face and smack me in the head with a large trout, laugh riot.”

But guess what he forgot at Band Camp when he left after the big concert?

My first guess was one of his instruments, and the story might be a little more tidied up if that were the case, but nope, our boy wonder left his sleeping bag, his back pack and his duffle bag with all his clothes in it back at Band Camp base camp. But the clarinet and alto made the trek back alive, praise zoraster! I’m not sure exactly how he managed to do that. I can understand misplacing one or two small things, like maybe your toothbrush misses the bus ride home, or you escape the walls of Band Camp without a contact lens case, but we are talking about an armful o’ stuff. You’d have to make two trips, just to not carry it all, that’s how much crap we are talking about. It’s like a week long mini-series of stuff to forget about. It hardly seems possible, but I think that boy could misplace a nostril and walk off without realizing it. He’d be all, “I’m breathing kind of funny right now, I don’t know why. Hmmmm. Whatever.”

And then we’d ask, “Lucas! Where is your left nostril? What did you do with your left nostril?!”

“You know, I just don’t know. I had it this morning, I was breathing with it and everything, and then after lunch, ‘zzz-blorp!’ it was gone,” and he’d say that, fresh as a daisy, as if the notion of losing one’s left nostril were a perfectly normal thing, happens all the time to lots of people.

That sound you heard? That was the sound of my head exploding in a gooey mass of jell-o pudding pops and frustration all over the kitchen table.

Maybe making him walk nekkid back to camp to get his crap will help next time. “Dude, you can wear clothes on the way back. They are in the duffle bag.”

1. Eons ago, my parents shipped me off to Colorado for a month of outdoor camp, something, I think I have never actually forgiven them for.

   But as that the joyous last night of camp was upon us, the counselors told us to pack our trunks, put them outside the cabins and head down to the lodge for our last meal.  As we walked down the trail, it started to rain.  It rained.  And rained.  And rained.  In great, giant buckets.

   It rained so much that after dinner they told us not to go back to the cabins, that we were all spending the night in the lodge.  A breathless counselor came in and told us how he had just watched one of the cabins get washed away.

   But, wait.  If the cabins were getting washed away, what about the trunks?

   Yep.  That year, every single kid went home from camp with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

   Personally, I was just glad to get out of there.

   Posted by John Moltz  on  07/20/07  at  01:17 PM

2. John, this psychological scarring you received at such a young age explains A LOT about the person you became. :-]

   I keed, I keed!

   Posted by jon  on  07/20/07  at  04:27 PM

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