Time to pack ‘er up – again

When my kids were smaller – and probably as recently as last week – they said I nagged them too much when it came to going places.

There was always that one question from me that would get the inevitable eye-roll response, or the ever-favourite, “Ya! Ya!” response – which was their way of saying “We know what we’re doing,” or “Stop asking us all of the time.”

So, what was the question? “Did you pack everything?” I can recall a time many years ago when my oldest son was 11 or 12 years old and we were going to a spring hockey camp at the arena in Liverpool. It wasn’t cool for a peewee hockey player to have their mom pack their hockey bag, so he had done it himself.

Before we left the house I asked him, “Did you pack everything?” I probably asked about a half dozen times and got an exasperated “Yes!” each time. Still, I wasn’t convinced. I even suggested we should pull over on the side of the road as we left the driveway so I could check the bag.

“Mom, I know how to pack a hockey bag. I packed everything. Don’t pull over.” Yada, yada, yada.

We drive an hour and a half to Liverpool. We’re there for no more than 10 minutes when the world’s greatest packer comes out of the dressing room and tells me, “I don’t have my helmet.”

Of course, we would have discovered that had I pulled over on the side of the road as we left our driveway some 160 kilometres ago, but that was a moot point now.

We found a helmet in the lost and found that looked like something he would have worn in Timbits. The nickname Fishbowl was being used to describe it.

At least he learned his lesson. The next time the helmet was the first thing to go into the bag.

Still, inevitably, there is always something that forgets to get packed for a trip. I’m probably guilty of it too. Even in my 40s I know my mom has asked me from time to time if I’ve remembered to pack everything.

I may have even told her, ‘Ya! Ya!”

Last week my son, who is now 20, and his friends went to the Cavendish Beach Music Festival in PEI. My biggest worry was that my son would forget to bring his festival ticket. I had forwarded him an electronic version but also urged him to bring the paper one too.

I laid it on the table in plain sight, along with the $50 gas card I had given him as a Christmas gift to go towards the trip. Every time he walked past the table I’d mention, “Don’t forget your ticket.”

“Yep,” he’d say, but he’d never pick it up.

The next morning the boys (three of his friends making the trip with him had slept over) were planning to leave the house at 7 a.m. I was up at 6 a.m. to make sure they remembered everything.

“Don’t forget your ticket,” I mentioned to my son as he headed for the shower, went into the kitchen, was walking around in the driveway … as he just stood there breathing.

Finally, he grabbed it and put it in his truck.

(Honestly, that’s all I was asking.)

Two-and-a-half hours after the boys left I went down into our basement and saw a bag filled with four days’ worth of clothing sitting on a table.

It wasn’t my son’s bag, but I knew it was supposed to be in the truck on its way to PEI instead of sitting in our basement.

I placed a call to the experienced travellers.

I could hear the “Oh no,” response from one of the boys, presumably the owner of the leftbehind bag.

A few minutes later the boys called me back saying they had tracked down a friend who was going to Cavendish who hadn’t left Yarmouth yet. They were even staying at the same campground. That was lucky. Fifteen minutes later the trade-off took place in a parking lot near the highway.

“Tina to the rescue again!” another mom posted on my Facebook page.

Hopefully my kids remember that when they’re in their 40s, heading on a trip and I ask them once more for the 2,000th time, “Did you pack everything?”