Class Trips

When my girls were young, one of the most coveted volunteer jobs was to chaperone class trips. As a class mother I can remember women calling me up before the list was officially posted to see if they could pre-sign their name. And when I told these parents no--that I believed in equal opportunity and equal access; it did not bode well.

And some teachers were unhappy that there was a sign up sheet at all. These teachers preferred choosing the parents themselves. Teachers wanted the ability to appoint the most responsible parents to the trips that necessitated the most vigilance.

So this whole chaperone/class trip business was tricky. As a class mother I tried to appease all parties. Which meant telling some white lies. So if the teacher wasn’t happy with the parent who was listed for a trip, I was forced to broker a deal between the listed person and the teacher’s desired parent.

And that is how I came to be a chaperone for Mrs. Smith’s first grade class trip to the Museum of Natural History. Mrs. Smith wanted me, and not the person who volunteered.

And I only understood when I arrived at the museum why it was so important to have such intensely managerial minded chaperones in place of the not-so-managerial minded ones. Mrs. Smith gave very loose directions. She simply said Go explore and be seated back on the bus at 12:30 pm.

And when 12:30 arrived, my 4 students and I were seated on the bus as requested. But we did not have any assigned seats nor was there any check list when we got on the bus. Mrs. Smith took attendance by calling out Is everyone here? And when the group collectively replied Yes!  the bus went on its way.

Which gave me a belly-ache.

How did Mrs. Smith know for sure that no one was missing? If someone was absent they could not have voiced it. For all we knew there could have been an entire group of kids with or without a chaperone still wandering the museum.

And a few weeks ago a friend messaged me to say did you write your blog this week because I did not see it on Facebook? And two days later a different person said for some reason I stopped getting your postings on my news feed.

It disturbed me. Yet I could not figure out a way to ascertain if there were others out there who were not receiving my postings because if I wrote on Facebook Has anyone stopped seeing my daily messages? only the people who were still receiving  them could reply—and that did not provide me with the information I needed.

And so, just like Mrs. Smith trusted that everyone would return to the bus with all persons accounted for, I am forced to trust that if I do not post my daily “thoughts” my most avid readers will retrieve it directly from the Karenland website. And since Mrs. Smith never lost a child (but for Max Brown for about 20 minutes) maybe I won’t lose any followers either.

Perhaps, just like many things in life, it is a matter of faith.