Camp

The night before Elijah went to camp, I crawled into bed with him and asked if he was nervous about anything. Pooping your pants on a hike? Homesickness? What to do in a Jason Voorhees situation?

After a beat, Eli said, “I’m worried that when you die there is no heaven and there is just nothing.”

That was a lot harder to answer than “ball your underwear up and stick it under a bush.”

Existential crisis solved, we woke up early the next morning only to realize we didn’t wake up remotely early enough. While Eli and Diana argued and jammed last minute provisions into his overstuffed bag, I rocked back and forth by the back door, muttering, “So late…so very very late.”

We raced to drop off and weaved our way through the Evanston parents standing cult like, remembering their own underwear balling memories from thirty years ago. Social anxiety mixed with a fear of busses rendered me useless. Diana handed me Eli’s bags and said, “Stick these somewhere.”

Diana checked Eli in only to be informed that we had not filled out any of the 400 documents needed to attend camp.

Let’s all climb into the Wayback machine to 6 months ago. It was a cold Sunday afternoon. Diana, sick of literally doing everything for our sons, put me in charge of camp. I dutifully signed Eli up and then promptly ignored all future correspondence with subject lines like “Urgent” and “400 Documents needed to go to camp.”

I know it’s a dad cliché to be clueless and dumb. But entire eleven years blogs are built on it. I volunteered to fill out the forms. Diana shoved me out of the way when I biffed Eli’s birth date.

We got Eli on the bus and waved vigorously at his mop top through the tinted window. He slinked down to dodge our love.

Camp went well and we received lots of letters with terrible handwriting. Eli explored and grew and got close to nature and made lots of friends for life.  

And he was the last kid to get picked up from drop off because we missed the email.

Night Watching

With the thousands of hours of screens Elijah watches, it’s difficult to monitor everything he sees. Luckily, I’ve put age limits on his Youtube content, which enrages him. But he figured out all he has to do is watch on Diana’s devices to unlock all the disgusting contraband the internet has to offer.

He also likes to linger in the kitchen while Diana and I watch movies or TV, in the hopes he’ll see something off limits. I’ve never seen a kid take longer with popsicle wrapper. We have to physically remove him when “The Handmaid’s Tale” gets too juicy.

But he’s recently found a loophole: me.

A few nights a week, Eli waits patiently in his room after lights out until he’s sure Diana’s asleep. He then creeps into my room and taps me on the shoulder saying, “Do you want to watch TV?”

You bet I do.

We quietly retire to our TV room and watch late night, semi off limits movies and shows. We watched the Wes Anderson masterpiece “Rushmore,” the disappointing “Ready Player One,” my favorite show of all time, “Rick and Morty” and countless hours of “The Office.” These have all been pre-vetted by me to make sure he isn’t exposed to anything too scarring. But they do give him enough naughtiness to feel like he’s getting away with something.

The real entertainment for me is how scared Eli is of getting busted. I do lay it on a little thick, saying things like, “If mom catches us you won’t be able to play Fortnite for a month.” If Grover pads into the room, we both freeze, not even daring to breathe. “It’s HER!”

The truth is, Diana knows we do this. She’s no dummy. Besides, Diana takes her hearing aids out when she sleeps so we could be starting a punk band in the basement and she wouldn’t notice. She also does us the favor of clomping to the bathroom every half hour right above us, which adds to the drama.

Eli’s white whale is the animated show “Family Guy,” the crass, one time funny “Simpsons” rip off that made Seth McFarland and FOX millions. Eli believed this must be the funniest show in the history of the world because I wouldn’t let him watch it.

But like all banned things in our house, like gun video games and Coke and rules about wearing underwear, Eli eventually broke me down and I allowed him to watch one episode.

There was a rape joke within the first five minutes. Best dad ever.