Last week was my son’s final Field Day of elementary school and yesterday was his final field trip of the school year. I was involved in both and boy do I have some stories to tell.
In last week’s blog I beamed about how excited I was to finally be part of the Field Day’s face painting station. While I don’t have any experience working with face paint, the fact that any parent could volunteer to do it signaled to me that experience wasn’t necessary. I thought there would be some face paint and some stencils and that would be that. Turns out that’s usually what it was. But not this year.
This year one of the moms in the PTO brought a poster board of professional-grade examples for the kids to choose from. No simple stars on cheeks here. These had blended colors, perspective, glitter, you name it. I and the other parents took one look at that chart and had collective heart attacks. There was no way we were going to replicate those! To her credit, the mom from the PTO who brought the example chart knocked it out of the park. She was incredibly talented with face painting. And to our credit, we did our best with the materials we had. Most of the kids we face-painted went away with smiles, regardless of how accurate it was to the chart. But there were a handful of kids who were… well, let’s just say there’s no more humbling experience as an artist when a kid asks for something, you draw it for them, and they look at you with an expression that says “that’s it?”
Then there was the field trip yesterday. I was picked as one of the chaperones and, in the past, the experience has been unforgettable. This field trip, while enjoyable, had some moments I wish I could forget.
I should’ve known there was going to be something wrong with the day when the first interaction I had at the school was with a kid who said to me, “Hey, you were one of the face painting guys. You gave me the planets. They looked nothing like the ones on the chart. Another girl had way better ones than mine. I wanted those.” I resisted the urge to slap him upside the head, and moved on.
The field trip was to a popular farm that produced homemade ice cream and had lots of rides. My son was most excited to do the mini golfing. The other kids in my group wanted to do everything else. We realized eight holes into the mini golf course that there were eighteen holes and we were already behind schedule! So we skipped the remainder of the holes, much to my son’s chagrin, and proceeded to wait in extremely long lines for everything else. And by that I mean we got to do one other thing before the lunch break, which the kids’ mood was brightened by free ice cream.
After lunch the lines were even longer and we spent the remainder of the field trip waiting in lines before giving up on what lay at the end of them. We ended up waiting for one more ride on the bumper cars, only to have my son and the other kids literally plucked from the cars as they were climbing in them because the busses had to leave. It was heartbreaking and no one’s fault except for lots of area schools having the same idea for a field trip on the same day.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like both field day and the field trip were complete disasters. There were mostly bright moments and happy times and memories to be made, and I’m glad for the opportunity to have been a part of them for my son’s final year in elementary school. But I think my hopes were too high in that I was convinced nothing could go wrong. Some things did, but it wasn’t enough to ruin the days.
It’s just more fun to blog about the stuff that goes wrong, and I feel like it’s more fun for you folks to read.