Nothing reminds you you\u2019re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids. On a field trip. In a school bus. It\u2019s chaotic chatter \u2014 like birds in the trees \u2014 until one child starts humming Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony. Why Beethoven\u2019s Ninth? <\/p>\n
And then they all start to join in, one after another. Only \u2026 wait a minute \u2026 no, they\u2019re not humming. They\u2019re moo-ing. They are all moo-ing like cows! Beethoven! All of them now. Every last one. The bus is filled with the sound of bovines.
\nAnd I just have to smile.<\/p>\n
Nothing reminds you you\u2019re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids.
\n
\nIt\u2019s field trip season at my daughter\u2019s school. I\u2019m back on chaperone duty. Fixing up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for myself and the kid. Knowing that it will be a flattened, oozing, soggy mess by the time I go to eat it. All those molecules fused together into something indescribably disgusting, yet incredibly delicious. <\/p>\n
I \u201csweep\u201d the bus, making sure no one gets left behind. And open up Slim Jim beef sticks for kids with puppy-dog eyes. I remember those as a kid. Spicy. The color red that no meat has ever looked. And loaded with all manner of things I can\u2019t pronounce. Yet, I want one myself. <\/p>\n
This trip literally went out into the fields. The country. Out to the corn maze at the Sykes and Cooper Farm in Elkton. Never mind that the odds of coming out of a corn maze with the same number of children you went in with aren\u2019t in your favor. <\/p>\n
Part of a chaperone\u2019s job is to corral them in and corral them out. Or spend the rest of the day searching for the ones you lost. <\/p>\n
But when you spend time on a field trip, you become painfully aware of your own age. That you are amongst the little people, and the little people always have more fun. <\/p>\n
You\u2019re reminded of it constantly.\t<\/p>\n
Because when you\u2019re a kid, everything is a minor miracle. Everything is amazing. On a hayride, when the guide points out the rows of squash dangling from the tips of now-wilting flowers, they all pile to the edge to see. They \u201cOooh!\u201d in amazement for a vegetable they despise. <\/p>\n
How they can find fascination with the most mundane. An actual comment I heard, and which almost caused a stampede: \u201cHey guys, look! Here\u2019s where they paint the pumpkins!\u201d It was a picnic table with a paint-smeared tablecloth. No pumpkins. No paintbrushes. No nothing. But they all had to see. <\/p>\n
There was the corn popper \u2014 a cross between a bounce house and a trampoline. If you ask a child what Heaven is like or where they go when they die, they will tell you to a giant corn popper in the clouds. <\/p>\n
Kids don\u2019t jump on it. They launch themselves through the air like high velocity projectiles. As if they\u2019re spring-loaded. Tossed about like rag dolls. Propelled in every direction. Some who looked like they would never land. <\/p>\n
Kids crashed into each other. Every once in a while, one would come down, like a boxer retiring to the corner, clutching a red cheek. A teacher would hold an ice pack on it. Wipe away a tear. Tell him or her it was all right. Sad eyes said it all: \u201cHow did this happen? It had been so much fun. I\u2019ll never do that again!\u201d And then \u2026 WHOOOPIE! Gotta\u2019 go. Gotta\u2019 get back in there. <\/p>\n
Ha-ha! The miracle recovery of a child. Undaunted. Carefree. Living it up. Living only in the present. <\/p>\n
Ah, to live in in the present. The right now. Nothing else weighing on you \u2014 nothing but how many more jumps you can get in before the lady tells you it\u2019s time to come down. Just \u2026 one \u2026 more!\t<\/p>\n
No, that\u2019s not us. We adults. We don\u2019t really live in the present. Everything is glancing down the road. I looked at my phone \u2014 at the email piling up \u2014 then told myself to stop. To enjoy this, right now \u2014 this hootenanny in the hay fields. This chaos of laughter. A bouncing kid is the personification of joy. Maybe because they\u2019re weightless for that microsecond \u2014 truly free from everything that tries to hold them. Free to enjoy that fraction of a second in any way they see fit. No care in the world. <\/p>\n
Nothing reminds you you\u2019re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids. It\u2019ll teach you a lot, though. Like how once in a while you\u2019ve got a take a moment to \u201cmoo\u201d a little Beethoven and see it all through their eyes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nothing reminds you you\u2019re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids. On a field trip. In a school bus. It\u2019s chaotic chatter \u2014 like birds in the trees \u2014 until one child starts humming Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony. Why Beethoven\u2019s Ninth? And then they all start to join in, one after another. Only \u2026 wait a minute \u2026 no, they\u2019re not humming. They\u2019re moo-ing. They are all moo-ing like cows! Beethoven! All of them now. Every last one. The bus is filled with the sound of bovines. And I just have to smile. Nothing reminds you you\u2019re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317,8],"tags":[423,29,277,422],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-nutshells","category-parenthoodandchildren","tag-adulthood","tag-children","tag-elementary-school","tag-field-trips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}