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SALT LAKE CITY — One would think that having two women in your family leave for a Young Women camp for several days would be a good thing for the dad that gets to stay home and relax.
Send off the other kid to football camp for a week and one would imagine a very happy stay-at-home dad.
One would imagine.
But this “said one” would not have seen my wife and daughter, and son as well, prepare for these camps.
The word “tornado” comes to mind. So does, “Run for your life.” Stuff gets piled and unboxed and uncrated and unpackaged, and then shoved under the table and covered with more stuff.
Old stuff gets dragged out of storage and bemoaned or celebrated and added to one of these piles: stuff going, stuff not going, and stuff that exists only to be stored and put back on a shelf somewhere.
One would think that having two women in your family leave for a Young Women camp for several days would be a good thing for the dad that gets to stay home and relax. ... One would imagine.
New packages and unwrapped goods are all the rage. It isn’t adequate that there is a closet full of shampoo and bars of soap. There must be, for each camper, cute tiny containers of shampoo that are spankin’ new and have a little plastic safety clip that say “whoosh” when opened. Creating trash is part of the camp experience.
Same to be said for flashlights. Girl campers can’t pick one of the 17 flashlights in the emergency drawer. They must have a specialty commemorative flashlight/can opener/bear repellent combination. And it must have their name painted on with fingernail polish and be wrapped in princess-pink plastic.
And a deck of cards, once forbidden, is no longer sufficient. Fun and new, well-thought-of games on a new electronic pad with a new hot pink cover and matching battery charger must be purchased and packed so that happy campers can update their social network status.
Don’t bother telling them that there will be no reception in camp land.
Packing is done in a whirlwind the night before. The young women are to be at the church at 6:30 a.m. Kisses all around. “So what are you going to do with your time off?” I am asked.
"All day naps," my daughter chimes in. "Repaint the house," says my wife. My son is too busy texting to further a guess.
Let me tell you what dad is going to do with my time off.
I am re-rolling the sleeping bags you had to test for color matching and to see if they spoke to your soul. Then I will put them back in the storage room along with the tents and sleep pads and lanterns and lawn chairs and Hawaiian bug lamps and coolers and mosquito netting that didn’t “speak” to you either.
I will put all the food back that you bought and then left in the trunk of the car. I will scrape off the hot glue from the kitchen cabinet that was melted on when I made three personalized camp flags with cute, special sayings for everyone involved in the camp experience for the last 11 months.
The camp leaders will have planned on rain or snow or sun. ... They will have earplugs and scheduled time for making boondoggles. But the leaders will have no contingency plan for Diet Coke.
I will clean the car and do the chores from the week before camp when everyone was too stressed and too busy to do mundane tasks. I will the clean dog mess from where it should not be because the dog got in the garbage and ate the lunches. You know—the ones forgotten in the hot car. I will water the lawn that could not be watered because there were tents airing out and being decorated with flowers made of duct tape.
Last but not least, I will keep a running tally of the things I know from past camping excursions that will be needed, but were forgotten at home—like extra pants for ones who have famously had stomach flu. These items will be run up to camp around mid-week. Once delivered, I then will be asked to make a town run for wipes or ibuprofen when what is really needed is an ice-cold, caffeinated beverage for the adult leaders.
The camp leaders will have planned on rain or snow or sun. They will know if it’s a Box Elder bug year or a June bug year. They will have thought out lactose intolerance, gluten-free recipes, generators for twinkle lights, flags and coordinating tees with themes and cheers. They will have earplugs and scheduled time for making boondoggles.
But the leaders will have no contingency plan for Diet Coke.
That’s where I come in.
I will be the one to make the caffeine run. For that, they need a man—like they have needed a man to listen to them every night for months as they plan, deliberate over the theme, the activities, the tent positioning, and worry about how to get the girls there that aren’t usually there, and how to make it a challenge for those that are always there.
Then I realize I have a wife who cares deeply about the girls, including my daughter. She and countless other women donate hundreds of hours to make the weeklong activities memorable and life changing.
I’ll lift my Diet Coke to that. “Clink.”
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Davison writes about things he is familiar with: things like raising children, taking children to therapy, bailing children out of trouble, and trying not to beat up parents of other children when they yell at his children for not getting the basketball to their children. Read more from Davison at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com.
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