Camp Shopping

The difference in my children is sometimes astonishing. When I took Zachary into CVS to buy toiletries for camp, he simply followed along beside me and said, Yeah.

Shampoo?

Yeah.

Deodorant?

Sure.

When I asked what preference he had, he shrugged at pointed to a size bottle that he thought would be good.

That’s big enough, Mom.

Clearly, no big need for a jumbo size of shampoo when he’s only planning on two or three showers the whole month. In total, we spent about ten minutes in the store, five of which was waiting in line.

Ben, on the other hand, sat on the floor with three different kinds of acne wash and carefully read each label, sniffed each one to determine how they smelled. With each product, there had to be a compare and contrast. Not only was the style of the label considered, the product itself, the relative expense of it and the coolness factor was weighted.

Heavily.

By the end, he was equipped with tropical fresh, kiwi, mint, and something called chix fragrance.

You know, mom, chix… like Chicks… girls?

You want to smell like girls?

NO, Mom, it attracts chicks.

I just nodded because what I wanted to say was at the end of all these different scented products the only things he was going to attract was bugs. And a lot of them.

He then promptly came home after the hour it took to pick these things out and lined them up on the table. See above. I did not arrange them. He did. He sat and looked them over for another fifteen minutes.

Jake is going away for a week, too. He’s off with Allan to visit a friend up in Down East Maine. It’s beautiful up there, very rural and being only forty minutes from the Canadian boarder, very cold. He wanted to pack his own bag and brought it down to show me the contents.

I was curious to see what he would pick out to take.

Three shirts, three pairs of shorts, a water shirt-

Allan and I are going Kayaking, he said as he held up the shirt for me to see.

And a sarong.

That’s it.

The sarong is really pants, he told me.

Um… what about underwear? Socks? Toothbrush?

He broke out in a big grin, Oh yeah… and ran to get them.

He brought down two pairs of socks and two boxer shorts.

Jake? You’re going for a week.

Allan doesn’t care if I wear the same thing over and over.

Believe me, he cares if you change your underwear. Go get three more.

Ultimately, I had to go get the toothbrush and put it in, along with his bathing suit. I am usually the one to pack for the kids when going on trips- the few times Jeanine has done it I’ve noticed a need a day into the trip to buy not one but several things that are missing like socks, or the one necessary collared shirt for dining out.

Personally, I only let her pack for me once and I ended up with penny loafers and khakis for a weekend in Provincetown. I’m a sneaker and jeans kind of gal. I learned the hard way.

As they are getting older, it’s time to let them pack for themselves. You’ll never remember to put in enough underwear until you don’t put in enough underwear. You learn what’s really important to you- for me, the just right kind of hairbrush is key- and what is not- I refuse to go through the Ziploc bag routine and therefore end up with hotel products when I travel.

For Ben? It was brand new clothes and the proper scent arrangement of toiletries for a farm camp. Yes, a camp that is about working on a farm.

For Zachary? Walter’s baseball cap and Jeanine’s slip on Vans he heisted from both of them.

Jake? His sarong.

Very different, very sweet.

Especially with Chix scented deodorant and kiwi shampoo.