When one raises a child who nearly sets the hedges on fire (age four), cuts the curtains, couch, and phone cord (age five), melts wax on the furnace (age 7 or 8), climbs out onto the roof and hangs by the satellite dish (age 10), one is hesitant to allow one's offspring to leave ones sight for very long. In fact, when one's child is the only child required to have a parent come along to most outtings, it does little to encourage the parent's confidence in said child's ability to cope outside of the family home.
And so, with mild trepidation, I threw my chick out of the nest for the weekend. Yes, he's a little old to have his first truly away (no mom and dad, no grandparents, aunts, or uncles) trip, but there have been reasons for that. I have always known the leaving us would be alright. Never having been a clingy child, he has always wanted to leave us behind. I was more, and always am more, concerned that he can manage himself without a keeper watching out for him. And I worry that he'll make too much work for whoever is chaperoning. After all, I needed to know he'd be wise enough to not climb a 30 foot tree and get stuck. I didn't want the camp director to have to call in the fire company for a emergency rescue.
So we've waited until we knew he had the skills to cope and a self-reserve of resourcefulness before sending him out on his first away-trip without one of us playing 'chaperon.' Despite this, it was suggested to us, perhaps, just maybe, Jeremy might want to consider going along for this trip. I put my foot down. One, Jeremy would have had to give up a Friday-night gig with his band, Seventh Corvus, Two, I knew the kid needed to go on this trip without us. It's the first step in many towards his independence.
Located up North in Pennsylvania, several groups of teenagers from all over were congregating in this one spot for the weekend, filling the campus with about 200+ rowdy kids aging from 13-18. The girls from our youth group rode in one vehicle, the boys in another. Apparently, after two and half hours of riding, a van of teenage boys will become rather resourceful. Among their more mild entertainments, they started making up and talking in foreign accents, or their impressions of them. The older guys decided Joshua had the best Scottish accent, and that he needed to pretend he was an exchange student from Scotland. They'd all have his back and make the story more believable. One them, even went so far as to "coach" him on some Scottish history. "Now if someone asks you about William Wallace..."
They let the girls from our group in on the joke, so they could lend credence to the story. Well into Friday night, and part of Saturday our teens had the ruse going pretty strong. Because some of our teens have been to this camp several times over the years, theirs were familiar faces. But this was Joshua's first time, and being that he was an 'unknown' element, their joke was made even better. The Boy was able to keep the accent going, never slipping out of character, and according to the seventeen and the eighteen year old who came up with the idea to pass Josh the Scot off to all the other campers, the girls flocked to my son's side. "It was the accent," Josh the Scot said, when telling the story to me later. "They thought I really was from another country, and so I was quite popular." The other boys told me Josh could and probably would have made most of the camp believe he truly was an exchange student if he hadn't forgotten his impromptu history lessons..."William Wallace? Never heard of him..."
Later last night, while he was leaning on his bedroom door, Joshua said to Jeremy and I, "I have a confession to make. I didn't think about you guys ONE bit the whole weekend. It was that great." He stretched, and sighed, then shut his door. Jeremy turned to me and smiled and said, "He did reaaally well this weekend. Really well."
Whew.
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