Who knew the highly anticipated camp calls would be such a blow to my relationship? (BTW – I’m not always this overbearing, but when my baby is 1000 miles away for a month and I get 10 minutes to talk to him… it’s ON….)

Okay, it’s camp time and everyone is getting their calls from the kids.  What I’m finding is that I want to strangle my husband during and after each call.  The crazy thing is, I’m apparently not alone.

Look, we moms are ready.  We’ve stayed up until the wee hours waiting for the pictures to download and we’ve studied them.   We know what our kids have done each day and whether they look like they’ve made friends or they’re feeling left out.  We know whether they’re arms are around a friend or they’re sitting uncomfortably next to someone with their hands in their lap. 

We can tell every detail and our minds are racing to find out the truths behind the images and we want to hear their sweet little voices.  We also know that what we have to say is way more important than what our hubbies have to say and we let them talk simply because well:

Me:  “Jake, your hike looked insane yesterday.  Was it fun?  How cold was the water?  Were the rocks slippery?  Are you wearing your sunblock?  Your headgear?  Do you love the rock wall?  How long is the zip line?  Who’s the other boy with braces?  Is he your best friend?  Is anyone mean?  Are the counselors nice?  What are you eating?  How big is the zipline?  Was your camp cooler looking than the one you played baseball against on Tuesday?”

Sure, I spouted off a lot of questions… there’s a lot to ask and only 10 minutes to talk.  After he gave me a one or two word response to each, I moved on to the next.  I looked over to see the frustration in Mark’s eyes.  A couple of times he started to butt in with an “ummm, Hey Jake, do you umm” and I bowled right over him with my inquisition.  Then he looked at me sideways and I whispered, in that angry whisper that would be a yell if you could speak louder, and say “What?  Have your questions ready.”

Mark:  Jake, have you gotten all my letters?

Jake:  Yep

Mark: Which ones?

Jake:  Ummmm, Well the one about my new team when I get home, and ummm, I don’t know, I don’t remember them all.

Is he f-ing kidding me?  I sit on hold for Verizon longer than the time I have allotted to talk here, and my husband wants Jake to rattle off about letters???  This is not an acceptable caliber of conversation!  And I’m am the conversation rater, I’ll have you know.

Mark:  Did you get the one where I bowled a 300?

Jake:  Oh, yeah.  That was awesome.  Did that really happen?

Okay readers, I have to interject here.  You’re thinking this is high enough caliber right?  Well, I mean how often does someone who is not a pro, actually bowl a 300?  What I should share is that he’s not so much talking about this:

as he is talking about this:

Yep, I’m listening to my husband waste time talking about Wii f-ing sports!

So, I interrupted again…. “How was your camp-out?  Were you scared?  Did you sleep through the night?  What song did you do in the lip-sync; you looked like Eminem.”

Again, Mark gave me the look, but this time he put the phone by his side in annoyance.

So, again I did the whisper/yell: “You are so selfish, you don’t want to hear him talk ‘cuz I’m asking all the questions?”

Me:   Do you have a girlfriend?  Do you like the go carts?

Mark:  How many go carts are there?

Did he just ask that question?  I told him last week there are 2.  TWO Freakin’ go carts.  Great, now he’s wasting my time with shit he already knows.  Tic, Toc, baby.

Mark then went on to rattle off the line up for his travel baseball team this season and tell him about the bat he just ordered…

Mark: Guess which bat I got you?

Jake: The Louisville Vertex?

Mark: noooo

Jake: the new Worth?

Mark: noooo

Jake: Nike Aero?

Mark: noooo, I’ll give you a hint, it’s made by Easton.

Is this happening?  Does anyone feel my pain here?

Apparently, you do… I had a friend tell me that she just took the phone out of her husband’s hand when she felt he was done. Two minutes she gave him and then she plucked it right away from his eager ear. They didn’t talk to each other for the rest of the night.

Another said she arranged all calls while hubby was at work.

A third said Her husband’s only question was, “Is your bed comfortable?”

“You gave him one question and that’s all he could come up with?” I asked.

“No, I would have given him more but he lost his privileges based on his first.”

And yet another told me she can’t deal with the calls because her hubby’s voice changes. “It gets all high like he’s talking to a dog– Hi Lindseeeeeeey, how are your Friennnnds? Are you, woushey woo having fun? Hmmm? Huh?”

In the end, I realized that we moms want OUR time to be all ours. Even if the hub is right (and he was).  All my babe wanted to do was hear us and all I wanted to do was get answers to every thought and query I’ve stored in my head from the minute he set foot on the plane.

Luckily for my hubby the calls are infrequent enough that our marriage will withstand these bumps in the road. Next year, I’m just gonna tell him they did away with calls altogether due to the rise in the divorce rate.

Take a sec to check out some of the humor that any parent can relate to:  The Day My Son’s Ladybug Ran Away – who knew saying goodbye to an insect would be so hard?  or  I May Have Run Over an Elderly Person While Driving Carpool.  OH, ENTER TO WIN a robotic floor cleaner and a bag of goodies from iVillage’s “Stuff We Love” leave a comment here to sign up.

 

– JENNY FROM THE BLOG