‘I’m going camping on Thursday,’ the teenager informs me. ‘I’ll need a sleeping bag.’
Then the following day just as I’m about to leave to visit two schools, I hear The Teenager emerging from his room.
‘Where are you going?’
I explain and add, ‘And afterwards I’ll go and buy you a sleeping bag.’
‘Oh,’ he says, disinterestedly as I close the front door.
Later on, I drive to an outdoors specialist shop some miles distant right on the edge of town.
I like the natural stone paving in this shop. It speaks to me of mountains and of the wilderness, and reminds me of when I’ve been camping before.
The sleeping bags are to be found at the top of a spiral staircase. I don’t have a head for heights and so find the climb unnerving. At the top I look at the different sleeping bags. Someone, I was told, would be joining me to help me soon.
I know exactly what I want.
Eventually, after a long wait someone comes up the stairs to help. By this time I’ve upgraded my choice from a simple basic sleeping bag to one that could withstand the super cooled temperatures within the Large Hadron Collider.
‘I need a large sleeping bag and a large sleeping mat too,’ I explain.
Such a simple request.
He hands me a tightly wrapped bag. ‘This one’s good.’
I speak of size. ‘He’s taller than you. I do need a large sleeping bag. Is this one large?’
‘Yes,’ he says.
We turn to the mats. But there are no large ones on display.’
He goes into the back to get one.
He is gone an age.
Eventually he returns carrying a mat, ‘Anything else?’ He helpfully takes the sleeping bag from me as I nervously attempt the descent. This shop is obviously designed for hardy mountain goat types rather than the likes of me.
I pay at the checkout and leave.
I have mental images of showing The Teenager how to inflate the mat and then of him snuggled contentedly inside the sleeping bag like an Egyptian mummy. I can’t wait to show him.
‘What’s that?’ he asks.
He’s horrified.
He’s looking at the price tags.
‘You spent that much!’
He knows we have hardly any money. I have spent a fortune. I’m touched that he’s thinking about the expense, and is realising how much things cost.
I explain the thinking behind my extravagance.
‘It will last a lifetime. It will come in so handy for university and for when you go travelling.’
‘But I don’t like sleeping bags.’
‘But you’re going camping.’
‘Yeah. But you’ve spent all this money,’ he reprimands. ‘You shouldn’t have spent that much money on these.’
I’m touched.
I’m thinking at last he understands how stretched we are for cash. He’s looking at the price tickets again.
‘You really spent this much!’
I am a bit ashamed of the amount I’ve spent, but I know I’ve got something that will really last. I can imagine him travelling the world using them.
‘You shouldn’t have.’ The Teenager declares. ‘You could have spent that money on…’
I’m ahead of him. I can guess what he’s thinking. He thinking of the bills, of food or perhaps of some new clothes for me.
‘‘You could have spent that money on games for the Wii instead,’ he declares. ‘That’s what I really want. Can’t you take these back? ’
‘Oh,’ I say, as I finally understand his thinking.
Outside it is still raining heavily. I feel bleak.
‘Well, if you don’t want them I can use them.’
‘Okay,’ The Teenager says dismissively.
But in my head I still have the image of him trying them out, and I eventually coax him into doing so.
We open the mat first.
To my horror as it unfurls I can instantly see that it’s too small.
The teenager lies on it. Everything from the waist down is still on the hard floor.
‘He’s given me the wrong size. I’ll have to take it back.’
I drive the long distance back to the shop through the heavy rain.
The sales assistant sees me, looking wet and bedraggled with the half inflated bright orange mat, as soon as I walk in, and instantly understands the problem. He calls out and says he’ll go and find a larger size.
I don’t have to say a word.
The new mat is green. The Teenager is in a more conciliatory mood now as we unfurl it in his room and inflate it.
He lies on it and almost likes it.
We turn to the sleeping bag.
There’s something about it that doesn’t look quite right.
The Teenager snuggles into it.
It’s too small.
He doesn’t look like an Egyptian; instead he looks more like a curling maggot as he squirms on the floor.
I check the label.
The size I’ve been given is ‘Regular’ not ‘Large.’
There is a handwritten ‘L’ on one of the tags.
‘I’ll have to go back again,’ I say. ‘Please come with me.’
I know I’m losing it. I know that the teenager’s presence will help to keep me calm.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Just think of cool wet grass.’
‘Think of cool wet grass,’ he calls again, as I manhandle the sleeping bag downstairs together with all the packaging, receipt and my debit card.
The paving stones at the entrance to the shop no longer hold the same appeal. It seems to me that they are the ideal setting now for a ritual sacrifice and disembowelling.
My sales assistant is nowhere to be seen. I guess he’s already spotted my ignominious entrance and has now run off to hide in some very distant outback.
I explain the problem to someone else. She goes off to find the right size, as I sink my head onto the soft downy sleeping bag on the counter.
Cool wet grass.
Someone else asks if they can help. I explain the problem and indicate the label.
‘Oh the ‘L’ means it’s a left sided zip,’ this new assistant informs me as he moves away.
After he’s gone, I think back to how I’d had to free a squirming maggoty teenager by using a zip that was definitely sewn onto the right-hand side of the sleeping bag.
I know that some future hapless customer determined upon having a left handed zip is going to be disappointed.
A long time later my sales assistant returns to say that they don’t have that particular sleeping bag in large.
I have to re-ascend the scary spiral stairs in order to find another.
She’s very careful with me, she can see I’m close to tears, she doesn’t understand that it’s a combination of everything.
From time to time she disappears to discuss sleeping bags with the assistant who is still hiding somewhere in the outback.
‘He’s on his lunch break,’ she tells me.
I realise I haven’t had breakfast yet.
‘Is your son very large,’ she asks me after she returns from asking for further advice. She makes an unconscious movement with her hands and I know that the cowardly sales assistant hidden in the outback thinks that I’m trying to buy a sleeping bag for a super-sized teenager.
She thinks he’s fat.
Cool wet grass.
‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s tall and slim.’
I don’t think she believes me.
We eventually find another sleeping bag which claims to be 220cms long, and at the till I am asked to pay another £18 pounds.
‘It’s a different make you see.’
Back home The Teenager unfurls the sleeping bag and crawls into it. He looks like an Egyptian mummy.
‘I think the other one was better,’ he says. ‘I think the other one was larger. The other one was better.’
Cool wet grass. Cool wet grass.
There’s a pause.
The Egyptian speaks.
‘And anyway,’ he sighs. ‘I’m not sure that I still want to go camping on Thursday.’
I leave quickly, go downstairs, take my socks off and step outside.
Cool wet grass!
.
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