“He’s exhausting,” I said.
Undeterred, Max tried to “improve” her tent by adding guy lines where none were needed. He tied a rope from her rainfly to a nearby birch, creating a tripping hazard that he then tripped over himself, collapsing his own half-assembled tent in the process. I had to bite my lip so hard I tasted blood to keep from laughing. My mom simply handed him a bandage for his scraped elbow and said, “Nature doesn’t need fixing, Max. Just attention.” Camp With Mom And My Annoying Friend Who Wants ...
She was right. I had invited him because, despite the annoyance, Max was loyal, enthusiastic, and deeply, clumsily kind. He wanted to fix everything because he cared too much. And my mom, by refusing to let him fix anything, had taught him a lesson no YouTube video could: that some things—friendship, a campfire, a quiet night under the stars—are already whole. They don’t need fixing. They just need showing up. “He’s exhausting,” I said
“No offense, Mrs. D.,” he said, eyeing our simple tarp and rope, “but we’re going to need more than that. I watched a video. The number one cause of camping failure is shelter collapse.” I had to bite my lip so hard
“Fix things. I just… I want to help. I want to be useful. But I end up making everything worse.”
My mom just smiled. “We’ll risk it, Max.”
We broke camp the next morning under a clear blue sky. My mom’s old canvas tent packed up in three minutes. Max’s ultralight tent took forty-five and still didn’t fit back in its sack. He didn’t offer any “tips.” He just struggled quietly, and when I handed him a spare bungee cord to strap the lumpy bag to his pack, he said, “Thanks,” without adding a critique of the cord’s tensile strength.