She’s the One Without a Shirt

I’m really not good at packing for day trips and outings. I was hoping that packing for daycare every day would make me better at it, but instead it’s made me worse. Daycare is routine—every day, the same stuff.

My shortcomings in this area became particularly evident recently when we gathered at a friends house for some barbecuing and fun. I remembered the corn salad—but I forgot Spicy Girl’s bathing suit, sunscreen and other outdoor “necessities.” Thankfully, the party’s host had plenty to loan out and so the day went off without a hitch. And, lucky for me, at 2 1/2 Spicy Girl won’t remember this slip.

My own mother was not so lucky.

It was an early summer evening in the mid 70s. The night before my first day of day camp. At that time, there were no stores open past 6PM—but it was 8PM when mom finally decided to take a look at the camp packing list.

Besides a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, we didn’t have anything on the list.

I panicked: “But mom, it says I need a bathing suit. I don’t have one!”

“You won’t swim tomorrow, it’s the first day. They never do that stuff on the first day,”

The first day of camp was 98 degrees.

I told my counselor that I couldn’t swim, because I had no suit. She sized me and my Danskin outfit up and down, and knew just what to do. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the 70s Danskin fashion “statement,” just think double-knit polyester in fabulous colors like mustard, brown and puce.

Knowing that the man-made fabric would withstand a direct hit from an atom bomb, my counselor was confident that it would survive the camp’s lake.

“Just take off your top and swim in your shorts,” she said.

OK, sounds like a plan. If I were in France.

But the mercury climbed above triple digits that day, and the outfit wasn’t exactly “breathable”. So, off my top came, and in I jumped. And since I had short hair and looked like any other boy in the lake, I went mostly unnoticed.

When I got home that night, my shorts were still wet. “Told you we’d swim,” I said defiantly. Mom threw my new bathing suit at me.

It seems I’ve inherited the gene. I guess I will just need to make sure that Spicy Girl has waterproof clothes.