I had the delightful opportunity to chaperone on Mitchell's class field trip yesterday. While certainly challenging and sometimes frustrating to be surrounded by that many pre-schoolers (it was two classes combined), the humor sprouting up everywhere more than made up for the fact that none of them can line up and stay in a line for more than 3 seconds, the class rule: no fingers in yours or anyone else's noses is only harder to enforce the harder to try, pushing each other is as natural as breathing, silliness is as contagious as yawning, they REFUSE to go the bathroom in groups but need to go the moment you come back with the last kid, and they are even worse at remembering names than I am! By the end of the trip, I had resigned myself to answering to "You! Hey, you!" and "Mitchell's mom!" and "Hey, lady!"
While funny things were constantly being done and said (like the little boy I sat near on the bus who had a whole list of great questions like "What do camels sound like?" and "Why are killer whales called 'killers'?" and "Can killer whales eat 100 baby seals?"), the funniest time for me was lunch time.
You should have seen the excitement when they all sat down to eat. For most of these kids who get home from school long before lunch time, this was their first experience bringing a lunch with them to school and they were just crazy about it! They were unpacking every item, opening each thing, taking a look at it, then sampling each thing before adding it to the pile in front of them. They were comparing their loot and attempting to trade. They were showing off their napkins. Each kid wanted to show me and talk about each item his mom gave him, which was difficult given the kid to adult ratio, but I tried to listen to them!
It wasn't just funny how the kids reacted to lunch. It was also humorous to see what each mom sent with her kid. These little 3 and 4 year olds had whole sandwiches full of all sort of nutritious things, which would have been enough to fill my adult belly! One kid had a bagel almost as big as his head. Another kid had a picture of his mom in his paper bag. A little girl had quite the diverse selection of deli meats and cheeses all sliced and put in separate baggies. My favorite though, was the boy who brought a gigantic bottle of orange juice. He opened it up, took out three straws from his bag, put them in, then tipped the bottle up to drink out of it (why did he put straws in it? I don't know...) and missed his mouth. The juice dumped all down the front of him and puddled in his t shirt in his lap. I made him stand up then and the puddle splatted on the ground. So much for his giant bottle of OJ... Shucks.
We had a blast, but it was quite a long day for the kids (and me!) and by the time the bus came back for us, we were all very ready. You might think worn out preschoolers would fall asleep on the ride home, but no, I believe the bus ride was their favorite part and NOT something to be slept through! Driving along Lakeshore Drive in a big, yellow school bus would have been enough for these kids. We could have just done that, I think!
What a fun age when everything is an adventure, mud is the best thing ever, a big, bumpy, squeaky school bus brings you delight, silly faces make you laugh 'till your tummy hurts, and you are allowed to walk around with your finger in your nose and come out of the bathroom stall with your pants still around your ankles...
