Weekend Pirates

My sons are playing pirate this weekend.  The three of them left on our sailboat this morning with food and drink for two days.  While loading the boat, one of them asked if the pillows were on board yet and the other two laughed at him.

“We’re not bringing pillows on this trip.  We’re roughing it,” said my oldest boy.  But when the youngest one came out with his fluffy pillow under his arm, the other two reluctantly  called out, “Oh, alright; get ours too!”

I stood on the dock going through a mental checklist asking, “Do you have the bug spray?- yes -  Do you have the sunblock? -yes -  Water? -yes - Matches?”

“Mom, we know what we’re doing.  You don’t have to ask us if we packed everything.”

It’s true.  I don’t have to do that every time my boys go off somewhere, but I can’t help myself.  Besides, I can’t tell you how many times I asked an obvious question like, “Do you have your dorm room key? your wallet? your license?" and got a blank stare as an answer, followed by the boy running off to his room for the missing object.

As the boat pulled away from the dock, I cupped my hands around my mouth to make a bullhorn and yelled, “Where are your hats and sunglasses?!”

They looked at each other with that blank stare and turned the boat around. My husband ran inside to get three baseball caps, and as I threw a line out for them to grab, I asked, again, “Are you sure you have the sunblock?”

“Yes, mom!” my son said, rolling his eyes, “it’s on the boat already.”

“You really have to stop doing that,” my husband told me as we watched the boat take off again.  “They are grown men.”

“Grown men who forget their hats,” I replied.

As the temperature reached into the 90's, I found myself wondering if they were applying sunblock regularly, or if they remembered to put it on at all. I knew they wouldn’t be spreading sunblock on each other’s backs.  Pirates don’t do those things.

 One of my sons was on a medication this week that required him to remain out of the sun.  How would that be possible on a bright hot summer’s day at the beach?  Was he going to stay down in the cabin all day?  They forgot to pack an umbrella.  But then, again, pirates don’t pack umbrellas.

I worried about the rip tides we were having this weekend.  I warned them to beware, but would that be enough?  Pirates don’t listen to their mothers.  They swig rum and dare each other to walk the plank, or some such thing.

At 3:00 PM the phone rang.  It was my youngest son calling to see if we would be coming down to the beach to join them. Odd, I thought.  Pirates calling for parental companionship? I was perfectly content under our shady tree, reading a book, so I told my husband to go ahead without me.

“I’ll just be there a little while,” he told me.  “I have to bring them some things.”

“Oh? What things?”

“They forgot the wood for the fire, and I’ll bring an umbrella so Paul can get out of the sun… And the sunblock," he mumbled. "They forgot the sunblock.”