11-7-02 Side Streets, Kimra Traynor Herb
Queen of Field Trips
By Kimra Traynor Herb
IPS Features
Yesterday, I
endured the FIELD TRIP FROM HELL. I don't say this lightly. I am a seasoned mom
of three boys, one in high school, one in junior high and a first grader. So,
needless to say, I have been around the ole field trip block a few hundred
times. I have always tried to make it a priority, whether I was working outside
the home or within, to sign up to chaperone most, if not all, of my boys' field
trips. This way, the boys will get to know how much I love them (without end)
and I can see how they behave around others (they usually stack up well). During
my reign of the last 10 years or so as "Queen of the Field Trips" I
have been a lot of different places: apple orchards, zoos, planetariums,
religious shrines, political headquarters, farms, barns, and ice cream
factories, to name a few. Yesterday was a trip to a pumpkin patch. Now, the ole
pumpkin patch is a tried and true field trip- I have been to numerous pumpkin
patches over the years and all the trips have been pretty much status quo.
I wasn't worried a bit about the trip and figured a good time would be had by
all. After all, fresh air, pumpkins, hay rides, baby animals and a mess of six
year olds..... it was a perfect recipe for success.
We got our first
clue that this trip was doomed right from the start. When we arrived at the YMCA
camp which was posing as a pumpkin patch (why were even there when a bonafide
pumpkin patch is just down the road I'll never know), they plopped the 100 or so
kids down in a gym and left us sitting. After our behinds were growing callouses
from waiting, we were ushered into an outdoor pavilion where we once again, you
guessed it, sat for a good fifteen minutes or so. Little did we know, these two
sedentary spells were going to be the highlights of our trip.
Finally, they
loaded us up all on a couple of old greasy busses that smelled as if they could
single handedly be responsible for all the ozone problems around earth's
atmosphere. A bumpy ride led us to a field where the delights of the day lay
sprawled out, in their infinite "glory" for us to behold. A field
which had several hundred small pumpkins clumped together posed, I guess, as a
pumpkin patch. We were told to trek through the woods to the further delights of
the day; a hayride which proved to be painful.
I was worried
when we loaded the kids on the wagon. The hay was literally crawling with
honeybees and yellow jackets. The pests were not just buzzing the kids, they
were burrowing in the hay and I just knew I was going to be the first to get
stung. Not so. It was my son, who yelped horridly and then began to panic. A bee
had made its way up his pants leg and was stinging him repeatedly on the leg. I
took my child and hustled him to the bathroom where we removed the pants, freed
the darned bee, and applied first aid to his stings. When we walked out of the
restroom, we discovered to our horror that the driver of the hayride was waiting
for us.
"We
couldn't leave without you!" He said.
My son started
to shake. "I don't want to go!" He whispered in my ear.
"He doesn't
want to go." I declared.
"Nonsense!"
The dense man replied. "We wouldn't want him to miss out on all the
fun!"
The
"fun" for the rest of the day included being slung with mud on the
hayride, avoiding smoke inhalation damage and black lung at the ole campfire
straight from you know where, and being stung two more times by yellow jackets.
The bee situation was so out of control that the whole ordeal reckoned memories
of an Alfred Hitchcock horror movie. When we finally, blessedly, returned to the
classroom at the end of the day, it beckoned as if a chorus of angels were
singing in the background. The air smelled sweet and fresh, and best of all, no
stinging, flying menaces were anywhere to be seen. The children sunk gratefully
into their chairs, glad to be safe at last from the unending terror that the day
had revealed. Never before had a group of six year olds welcomed the sights of
books and papers and pencils; work formerly dreaded was now revealed in its true
light: a sweet respite from the horror of the makeshift pumpkin patch.
I am signed up for several more field trips this year and know that pretty much it is a safe bet that those future trips to the planetarium and the symphony hold little in the way of terror- save a vomitfest- that could revile the nightmare of the Field Trip From Hell.
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