Yesterday I chaperoned one of Cat’s class field trips. She is in second grade and so the bus ride was a lively, ear-splitting 30 minutes each way to our destination with about 36 7 and 8 year old kids. I had forgotten the charming acoustics of big yellow buses.
Cat chose a seat for us in the very last row, which was always my personal favorite when riding school buses. We settled in our seats, and I pulled out a pack of Hello Kitty playing cards figuring that we would kill time playing Go Fish or Texas Hold ‘Em.
And so we did for two hands until Cat noticed what her schoolmates were doing. Apparently, the children on the other side of the bus, the last three rows, were playing a game wherein they pretended that cars following the bus were full of terrorists and/or drug dealers. The children would then pretend to shoot at the terrorists.
“You use drugs and sell them. Blam to you,” yelled an angelic-faced little boy with blonde hair.
“I am going after that one. He looks like he blows up buildings.”
I should note that we live in a very safe, very comfortable, very uneventful bucolic little area in Southeastern PA where the only crime wave I am aware of is when the high school kids walk into open garages and steal beer out of the beer fridges. That is big news in our burg. Needles don’t litter the sidewalks, and the only explosives are fireworks from the nearby arboretum that puts on several shows a year. We live in Stepford not Beruit.
The most intriguing/astounding/shocking moment however came from one of two little girls sitting in the back row across from us. One of them was pretending to shoot using a handgun. After a few minutes she yelled out, “They are still coming, hand me my automatic.” A few minutes after that she yelled, “We haven’t stopped them, I need my machine gun.” And then, finally she yelled, “Hand me my rocket launcher so I can take them out.”
Ummmm….what does a leftist, tree-hugging, puppy rescuing, fill in extreme liberal description here Mom do in such circumstances?
Not much effective. I tried to distract them by asking what else they saw out the windows and tried to entertain them with Peppermint Twist hand sanitizer but even minty fresh germ fighting is no match for pseudo-suburban warfare. They just became soldiers of fortune that smelled like candy canes.
Cat had started to hold up her finger gun. I asked her what weapon she was sporting. “A watergun Mommy.” Phew.
Still and all, I convinced her to play news reporter and write in her journal all that she saw pass by on our journey. She recorded cows, horses, barns, goats and a windmill. No drug dealers or terrorists appeared in her world.
It was her class trip, but I think I received the education.