Dad on Duty #115

This time of year, it’s all about special events.

Field days, festivals and off campus trips are the dominant subjects for the next two months, in many ways.

It’s a funny place to be right now; it’s been a LONG trek to get here, and the end is not too far off, but at the same time the finale is not really close enough to see.

The middle school girls in my carpool this morning describe it as….well….weird.  They know there are only about 20 school days left, but they note that it feels like the “middle” still.  I ask the middle-schoolers; can you see the end?  Nope, they all 3 reply. 

Teachers are trying to get the kids outside as much as possible.  But we also still have real learning objectives to complete.  It’s hard to teach at 180 days into this marathon, when the sun is shining.  Attention spans are crumbling.   

Over these past 3 weeks I’ve helped with an all-school field day and three off-campus field trips.  That’s a whole buncha kid herding, bandaid-applying and lunch-carrying.

I’m going to condense these various days and bake them into one lunch-portion story of “the Adventures of Special Events Man!”, a totally lame superhero who’s only power is bandaid-applying. 

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Special Events Man’s first assignment is helping with 1st grade going to the Christmas Tree farm.  It’s an hour plus drive away.  Everyone has a pretty bad case of bus-butt by the time we arrive. 

These folks at the Christmas Tree farm are well organized, and the setting is beautiful.  They keep the kids moving, and interacting in fun and engaging stuff. 

There are four other schools here at same time.  Most are using similar processes to account for and herd the kids.  So that is both reassuring, but also a little confusing. 

One of the schools is using whistles (which we, and every other school in the entire world, use too) to muster their kids.  The problem is, there is really no way to make that whistle school-specific.  It’s just a whistle.  And they all sound the same. 

So as their teacher blows her whistle 3 times in quick succession, about 300 kids…..only 100 of which actually belong to her…..turn and start to move that way.

I literally walk over to her and tell her:  If you just blow a whistle three times, you’re going to get every kid that’s here, including ours.  You better do that some other way.  I seriously cannot be running over here retrieving my kids from your pile, every time you blow that whistle.  She stares at me for a moment and thinks about it, and then decides she’ll add the school name, in the loudest voice she can muster, after the whistle.  Sure, let’s try that. It works-ish. 

A little later, a random kid from another school starts hanging out with one of our classes.  I didn’t notice him at first…..I don’t know these kids well enough yet to recognize everyone, and especially to recognize when someone *shouldn’t* be there (that’s way harder).  But by the second rotation I realize something is off.  I point to the boy and ask our teacher; “hey, is that one ours?”  She looks for a moment and then finally replies:  “Nope.”  I turn back the other way and happen to see a teacher with a similar shirt as our guest player.  I motion to her, and just point at the boy.  She rolls her eyes so hard you can hear it and goes sprinting over to our group to retrieve him, castigating him as they return to her herd.  “But I like them” he laments.  Yeah, we seem to do that to people…..we’re pretty cool.

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Our next assignment a few days later is to take 3rd grade to the Austin Nature museum, then to a local park for free play time. 

The Nature museum was really fun, and the weather was *perfect*.  I think the kids loved it.

By the time we leave there and go to the free play park, the temperature has skyrocketed.  The kids are playing hard at the park, and having a blast.

But as we are lining up to load busses and head back to school, suddenly the bottom falls out.  I get called by the teachers to come to the staging area, and am confronted with three kids who have injuries and three other kids who are overheated and sick. 

We have an MCI.  And it’s time to leave. 

I move through with bandaids and cools cloths as fast as I can.  As I’m doing so, one of the bus drivers shows up and says, firmly, that we need to leave NOW.  We don’t have extra drivers in the district transport system, so the folks that take us on field trips also have to do the regular school runs.  And these folks are about to time out (with 3 busses), which will have a huge domino effect on the whole school system.

So I hastily do what I can for the ill and injured, and we load them up for the drive back to school.

Once in my truck following the busses, I call Rocio, our nurse.  She recognizes me on caller ID and just answers “yes sir?”.  I reply “are you ready?”.  There is a…….pause.  “For……what….?”   I tell her “you’ve got six inbound patients” and provide a brief report on each one.  She’s completely unfazed.  “Got it, will see you shortly” she replies.  And she did have it.  Totally. 

And that, people, is how you do that.

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Next we have Field Day.  This involves the whole school, but thankfully is here on our campus. 

The Specials teachers; Ms Colburn (music), Ms Phillips (art…and no, not *that* Ms Phillips….for the 100th time….), and Coaches Lane and Brummer were the lead organizers for the event, with Coach Lane and Brummer serving as the “faces” of the event.  As always, this team did amazing, from hand painted station signs (thanks to Genny) to effective ways to know if the kids had done every station.

Only real hiccup was…..rain.  It had threatened all morning while the little kids were out there.  Finally, about halfway through their rotation, it starts misting.  Nothing we couldn’t handle.  The kids are getting damp.  Then about 20 minutes later, with another 40 minutes or so to go for the little kids’ turn, it starts raining more substantially.  I go to Coach Lane and ask “what’s the plan?”.  He replies “we stick it out unless we get lightning.” Pointing to a random kid walking by us at the moment, he notes: “They’re water-proof”.  True. 

But after about 10 more minutes of the “real” rain, the kids are completely drenched, and Coach has to pull the plug.

So now, 300 wet kids stampede back into the school.  They enter through the gym area, and the scale of destruction there is impressive.  It’s not just mud (and there’s lots of that), it’s like practically chunks of trees. I’m thinking; there is not enough mop in the whole city to fix this. 

Teachers corral kids to bathrooms to change clothes (most were prepared, a few will be wet for a while).  Kids strip off shoes and socks and stack them against their classroom wall.

Now, if you want to smell something that will actually change your DNA……walk into that classroom, with 23 pairs of hot, wet socks and shoes on the floor, dispensing smell molecules into the closed classroom…..about 2 hours later.  It is awesome.   

As part of the modified schedule to account for Field Day, everyone….all 600 kids…..are going to get lunch from the cafeteria in the same time block.  There is no clear plan for staggering it (for example, let the KG-ers pick up their lunches from 11 to 11:15, etc); it’s just open season for lunch from 11 to 12. 

Valerie and I start to contemplate the impact of that, at about 10:50.  And we agree that this is probably the worst idea we’ve ever heard.  Knife juggling would be better.

But as we try to overlay, in the 2 1/2 minutes we have to do so, an alternate plan, it suddenly doesn’t matter.  Everyone starts showing up.  And it looks like this, for every class, for the next 30 minutes.  600 kids. 

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Our last assignment for this installment of the Adventures of Special Events Man is taking 5th grade to the Waco zoo. 

Now, this zoo is pretty great.  I don’t know how they do it, but consistently, the animals are right in front of you, just feet away, and interactive.  The bear hangs out about 10 feet from the kids, and talks to them.  The jaguars are even closer.  The kids are having a *blast*.  And the weather is perfect today.

There’s a sign on the tiger pen that says “our female tiger is currently in heat, so you may hear her vocalizing more than usual.”  One kid turns to a teacher and asks “what does ‘in heat’ mean?”   Oh boy.  We haven’t gotten to that section in science yet…..

As one group of kids is watching the elephants, one of the elephants unloads a typical elephant poop.  Which is to say, poop about the size of a small car.  All the kids squeal and shout “he’s pooping!”.  As I’m walking by, I say “everybody poops.  You’re just jealous you can’t do it anytime you want, like him”.  They all go “ewwwwww……”.  Good dad work, right there. 

As we are about to load up, I start grabbing ice chests (that we used to bring lunches) and start to move them to the vehicles for return to school.  One mom had brought about half of them in her SUV, so I trucked them over to her car.  As she approached, she said “I’ll get them”.  I said, no, let me get it.  She replies “I’m fine”.  I said “but this is pretty much the only reason you even bring a boy on events like this, to lift stuff.  It’s kinda my job.”  She doesn’t even blink “nope, I do it all the time.  I’ve got it.  Thanks”.  And she did.   Respect. 

When we are ready to return from an off-campus event, the last step is accountability.  The kids and teachers get on the busses, the teachers count kids, and I check in with each one to see if we’re OK or if there’s a problem.

Well, today, there’s a problem.

First bus:  “I’m short 2”.  OK, the most likely explanation is that the other bus is *over* by two; kids hung out with their friends instead of their class.  I go to the other bus:  “We’re short 6”.

Well, that’s bad.

One kid pipes up and says “there’s a bunch in the bathrooms”.  Myself and another volunteer head that way, quickly.  Sure enough, as we approach, there’s a Cooper Elementary party happening just outside the bathrooms.  We just weren’t invited. 

We wrangle the Bathroom Party participants onto the busses, and recount.  Yep, all good.

Let’s head back to school.