Dude, you guys! It turns out that Chooch really is sailing when he says, “I’m going to Sailing.” (I know, that sounds weird, but it’s like “I’m going to Sailing Class” or whatever you want to call it.)
Henry and I got to watch him in action this past Saturday after dropping him off at 8am on the North Shore. Right off the bat, I said, “Wow, that boat is longer than I thought it was going to be” to which Henry sighed and said, “That’s not one boat, Erin. Those are four sailboats on a dock.”
OH OK I SEE IT NOW.
Anyway, that’s Chooch and his friend Ben doing things on the first one!
Sailing teacher teaching sailing things.
Anyway, there were three sailboats and I kept saying, “Oh, Chooch is winning! His boat is winning!” because everything is a race to me. Henry was just like, “MMmm, ok. Sure.”
Turns out that sailing lasts like two hours or something. I love my child but I am not that interested in sailing and/or being so close to the river.
So Henry and I bailed for a bit, went to find a cafe/bathroom. We can talk about that in another post.
We came back just in time to see Chooch’s boat pull up to the dock first and then another boat nearly wrecked. Etc etc.
Once all the kids were safely on terra firma (because it turns out it really is a high school calling club thing), the main sailing guy awarded stars to Chooch and Ben for WINNING! See, I was right! It really was a race!
While the guy was giving everyone some post-boat speech, I saw Chooch leave the group to rummage around in a big large green bag. I texted him and asked if he lost something, and when he came over to us to tell us he didn’t need a ride, he mentioned that he had been looking for his sailing cap, which his friend Zakk had kicked away from him last week or something, it wasn’t very interesting so I forgot already.
Then I asked to see this supposed star that he won and it’s one of those little silver star pins. “What are you supposed to do with this?” I asked.
“Put it on the hat that I lost,” he said with a shrug.
***
Walking back to the car, I saw that my friend Regina from work was in front of us! It made me laugh because we had also seen her when we were finding somewhere to park, but she was walking and appeared to be talking on the phone, so I didn’t want to roll down the window and shout her name. Coincidentally, when we saw here this second time, she was also walking back to her car, which was parked RIGHT IN FRONT OF OURS. I caught her attention and we chatted for a bit — it’s always so novel seeing work friends out in the wild now that we don’t see each other regularly in the office. Anyway, right away she congratulated Henry and me and I started to say, “For what?” and then I remembered, lol.
***
And that is the story of how I went to watch Chooch sail and how it turns out sailing is really sailing and not a code word for something insidious.