Representative Christopher

Christopher has packed. Allegedly. Tomorrow morning he is taking a train to Potsdam to take part in the European Youth Parlament, where he is apparently going to be wearing a suit (from Opa) and tie (from Grandpa) all week, as he discusses the future of Europe in the committee on culture and education. As reading material he is taking along study guides to Noam Chomsky and Karl Marx. This could be interesting.

Now that he has slouched off to join a friend's concert this evening, it has suddenly become very quiet. In the midst of the ongoing confusion all afternoon I have been wondering whether there is really no escape from stereotype roles and behaviors. How did I become the cliché of a mother running up and down the hall asking over and over and over, have you got your passport, have you got socks, did you pack enough underwear, why is that shirt not ironed, don't you need a towel, have you got all the chargers you need and did you leave some for your father ...?

Christopher, of course, is so cool in response to this that I think he is frozen solid and therefore not moving. Except for talking on his phone instead of putting things into the suitcase. And what kind of a crazed mind would invent intricately and impenetrably complex systems for packing a suit in a suitcase anyway? Christopher pats me on the head, tells me to calm down and then decides to start arguing with me about the futility of polishing shoes ...

Patrick, in the meantime, puts on Big Band music in the living room and turns it up loud, starts singing along even louder and wants to be a barbershop quartet all by himself. In the midst of packing he decides to tie his hair up into multiple pony tails at various odd points on his head. Obviously, this is the ideal time for the two of them to start arguing for hours on end about Norway. Norway?

As the boys argue about Norway, they have to keep hugging each other too. Then they hug me. Then they argue about Norway and hug each again and hug me again ... They are not going to see each other for an entire week, so apparently they need an extra supply of hugs to last that long. I ask Christopher if he is worried that he won't be able to hug anyone in Potsdam, but there is a girl from his class going too that he might be able to hug. But he says she is not so "excessive". Stern mother voice: There will be no excessive hugging of girls in Potsdam. Christopher just laughs and says he didn't mean "excessive", but now we don't know what he meant, because he has gone to help a friend perform at a concert.

This is the future of Europe?

Not too bad

While a flu is normally considered a miserable state, it is infinitely preferable to meningitis, so we are all very relieved that it now appears that Christopher is just suffering from an ordinary miserable flu.

The night wasn't too bad, but he still had a fever when he woke up, so Peter persuaded him to take a Voltaren tablet and we called our family doctor to ask him to come by. The doctor agreed with me that if Christopher had no other history, he would probably consider me a hysterical mother for calling him, but under the circumstances we need to be careful. He said that as long as Christopher is relatively alert (relative to Christopher's "normal" state), we could assume that he just has an ordinary flu, but if he starts drifting off into his little twilight zone, we should take him straight into the hospital. I'm probably going to drive Christopher mad testing his mental state constantly, along with putting my cold hands on his hot forehead, but things are looking much better today.