Camping with your son can be intense

“Please, dad, please,” begged six-year-old Khwezi.
I couldn’t say no.
His school had arranged a father-and-son camping night on Saturday. An exercise in bonding, they said. My idea of a bonding exercise is a martini or six.
Trying to fall asleep on a lumpy mattress in a tent when the south-easter pumps is not my idea of a good time. When I sleep I don’t like to be shaken or stirred. 
I had meant to practise putting up the tent but I had been distracted by a crossword clue: It sounds like battling to put up a wee wigwam and a tiny teepee could leave you feeling this (1, 6, 5)*. It proved a costly mistake. 
Khwezi and I made our way to the school. Most dads had their tents up. Some of these bad boys were spectacular. One tent looked like it had an en-suite bathroom and another could have been leased to General Bheki Cele as the police HQ.
Carrying a bit of tent envy I searched for a place to put up my two-man dude.
I chose a spot near the tuckshop: Location, location, location. Khwezi was delighted. Since he started school, tuckshop has emerged as his favourite field of study and he’s shown a real aptitude for it.
I pulled out my tent paraphernalia and went to work, but I couldn’t get the poles to speak to the canvas.
I took out the instructions and surreptitiously read them. I might as well have been reading an ANC Youth League press release. It was gibberish.
I started to sweat.
“Dad, can I have change?” Khwezi pleaded.
“I don’t have change. I only have a R100 note,” I explained.
“I’ll take the note, buy something and then I will give you the rest of the money and then you’ll have change,” Khwezi said triumphantly.
I handed him the cash. He’s going to make a great lawyer.
The other dads were joking, slapping each other on the back and talking rugby. When they were in their tents bonding with their sons Khwezi and I would be using ours as a blanket.
I pulled flaps, straightened sides, stuck poles into places that looked like poles should go, but no luck. One dad took photos of me.   
This was beyond humiliating; it was mortifying.
“You look a little tense; need some help?” asked a dad called Michael. If it wouldn’t have scarred Khwezi for the rest of his school life I’d have flung my arms around Michael.
“Where are your pegs?” he asked.
I looked around, but I was pegless. I was in full-blown panic mode when the headmaster stopped for a chat. “You’re the only dad who hasn’t put up his tent,” he observed.  
“My dog ate my pegs,” I offered.  
The MacGyver headmaster suggested I improvise. “Last year someone used kebab sticks.”
I had marshmallow sticks. Would these work, I asked Michael? I’ve never seen anyone laugh harder.
Eventually, a bunch of dads pitched in and the tent went up.
It wasn’t my lumpy mattress or the south-easter that kept me
awake that night, it was the fact that my dad dignity had suffered a mortal blow.
I tried to distract myself by focusing on the unsolved crossword clue. Wee wigwam? Tiny teepee? I remembered Michael telling me I looked “a little tense” and, for the first time that evening, I smiled.

* A LITTE TENSE. Wigwam and teepee are “tents”, which sounds like “tense”.