Epilogue: A Chapter Of Incidents

First glimpse of Rockstar after camp – he actually sees me before I see him

Rockstar: Hey, Mum…

Me: Oh! Um.. Hi. …You know that’s not your bag, right?

Rockstar: Hmm? Yeah, we just grab one each and move ’em in… 

Rockstar moves on to go line up in his class/group, and I stay with my mum friend, who is still looking out for her daughter. She whispers, “I can’t wait to really wash her,” and I agree fervently. After another 15 mins he comes back, this time pulling his real bag along.

“Don’t know where I got that scratch…”

“Ok, I can go now.” D’you want to wait for your friends/ take the bus/ hang out? “No, no, I want to go home. Camp’s over now.” Rockstar says they did call the parents of a couple of his friends who wanted to go home early… And then apparently at least one of them then changed their mind and decided to stay on, after their mum cabbed all the way to Sai Kung (and then cabbed back without her daughter haha)

Surprisingly, he doesn’t smell (:D) And what does he do, straight out of the shower?

HELLO SWEET LEGO, I MISSED YOU SO (and yes he’s now on 12+ year old Lego Architecture; how old do they have to be before they start hot wiring cars?)

Prologue: The night before his big school sports camp, Rockstar slept close to 1am. There was a full 45 minutes of serious freak-out, which he wouldn’t let me blog about before the trip, but now he has gotten home from camp alive, I am allowed to share 😀 At one point after midnight Rockstar then thought his nose was totally blocked, he would never get to sleep because he couldn’t breathe, and so, racking my brains, I broke out a Vicks Inhaler. “Oh, this thing is great. Make sure you put it in my bag…… I can’t smell anything… <ZZzzzs>.” (Not that he actually used it much at all). In his bag also went a flask of warm water, instant oatmeal sachets, crackers (no nuts or candy policy, at camp)….. NONE of which he had eaten, when he got back.

Me: How could you POSSIBLY have survived without a crash?? All your food is untouched! You actually did crash, didn’t you, just you don’t want to tell me? I’m going to have to beg people to play date with you from now on?? I’m texting your friends’ mums nnnowwwww!

Rockstar: I ate all the camp food. It’s actually quite yummy. 

Me: You’d actually eat that much…… ham? HOW MUCH DID YOU EAT??? 

“They give you more food really fast, if you can still eat it.” By Rockstar’s count, about 4 ham sandwiches/ 2 bowls of fried rice and broccoli per meal. 

“And an egg. They put these hard boiled eggs on the table and say we’re each supposed to eat one. There’s the same number of kids as eggs at each table so they’ll know if someone didn’t eat theirs.” Also, it turns out seeing everyone else eat the same thing helped a lot, because he would never eat that much ham on his own (which was why I packed all that oatmeal, which he prepares himself on weekend mornings. He didn’t touch because no one else was mixing oatmeal haha).

Me: <FEELS MUCH BETTER> (It’s true however that while they took care that the kids ate, us parents were certainly instructed beforehand that they have to regulate their own stomachs – so we’d started practicing with Rockstar packing and mixing his own instant oatmeal – 3 servings at a time – at school lunchtime the week before.)

Me: It turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise you slept close to 1am the night before? (Rockstar nods)

They did like, 13 sports in camp, according to Rockstar. “That’s why I could sleep!” He is however mildly disappointed I didn’t know he’d made it up the 6-meter rock-climbing wall “and rung the bell!” No mean feat, “They don’t let you climb up without 10 billion safety harnesses on.”

Oh, REALLY. Rockstar nods solemnly, “Those things are heavy.“ 

And there’ll be an Epilogue II…