This morning my middle child (squashed between the oldest and the twins), left for Greenfield Village with her father. I was feeling a little queasy at having wiggled out of this one....and every other field trip of the year. How did I do that?
The last field trip I attended involved riding a school bus, and from the moment we rattled down that dusty road, an open window ahead blowing my hair flat, and 60 voices singing something loud and off-key....eating a soggy sandwich in the middle of the grass, trying to keep the plastic from flying away and the bug out of my hair, listening to the chatter of the 10-year-olds and the drone of the presenter at the museum, smile pasted on my face, warm juice-box in hand....I promised myself I would never be trapped like that again. I survived the whole school experience years ago, and I don't want to go back. I really don't want to go back.
But this morning, I felt uneasy. I had spent the year neatly side-stepping those chaperone requests, and apologizing to my dear daughter about my inability to fulfill this particular duty of mommyhood...and with two days left of school I was suddenly guilty.
Momentarily chastened and ashamed of my lack of involvement, I looked up at the husband and offered with a thrust of confidence, "well, next year I may do a field trip..." and he turned slowly to stare at me. He knows me, this man.
"I LIKE this sort of thing," he says.
Well glory be to God. I'm off the hook.
Christy Writes: When There Are No Answers
6 years ago
5 comments:
My ears STILL hurt from going with my second on a field trip last week. Seriously - I don't know how any of our children have any hearing left AT ALL. Surely those little hairs inside their ears are breaking left and right.
What IS it with noise and children? Honestly, sometimes I think school is child abuse. Seriously. I think we send them in there, and they build up this wall of protection against the noise, the frantic activity, the peer pressure...and then they emerge, dented and calloused and we send them off into life. Hurrah for the homeschoolers! I bow to them!
I feel so much better... I thought I was the only mom who wriggled out of field trips. "I can only go on the half day trips" gets me out of most.
ah, good one Lori! I could do that, as long as I can drive alongside the bus and not ride inSIDE of it.
I had no idea - this was my first trip on a bus with kids. I really had no idea.
And on TOP of all the kids noise, they had a movie going constantly at full blast. High School Musical and then Charlotte's Web.
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