The Field Trip

You know that movie Children of the Corn?  I think I know how the kids came to live in the corn.  They were originally a kindergarten class on a fall field trip to a corn maze and the chaperones, well, they got hot and tired of walking in circles through the corn, so they told the kids they were going off to get the kids their lunches and they’d be right back…

Only, you know, they didn’t come right back.  They didn’t come back at all.  Instead they hopped aboard the school bus that brought them all there in the first place, and they took off, never to return.

Or at least, that’s how I imagined it happened.

In reality, us chaperones, we stayed.  For the whole day.  Leading children out of the corn.  Some of whom, guessing by their behavior, their parents might have been thrilled if we had left them there.  But like I said, we didn’t.

I know I should be thankful that I made it back alive, and just let it rest at that, but I have some questions I feel a need to get answers for:

1.  If the instructions given to the chaperones said for the chaperones to wear a watch, then why weren’t the teachers who wrote the instructions wearing watches?  Tell me, teachers, why did you keep asking ME what time it was?

2.  Why weren’t the teachers chaperoning any children?  How did you manage to pass them all off on the parent volunteers so the six of you could enjoy some relative quiet time at the corn maze?

3.  Does anybody know what kind of parent sends their child off on a filed trip without a brown bag lunch?  The field trip form specified a brown bag lunch.  A carton of chocolate milk is not, in my book, a brown bag lunch.  It is a drink.  And without refrigeration on a 90 degree day, the milk was likely curdled by the time your son got to drink it. I was too unnerved to check.  But just so you know, parent who didn’t bother to send a lunch, the school cafeteria supplied an emergency brown bag lunch for your child.  But he claimed to not like the peanut butter and jelly Uncrustables, the apple juice, or the cookies that were packed inside.  So, his lunch at the corn maze consisted of two sips of warm, curdled chocolate milk.

4.  And Snags?  Hello!  What was with the pedal car?  Why couldn’t you steer the thing?  I know you wanted to ride the car around the whole race track, but you kept wrecking into the tires and bales of hay.  After 10 minutes of watching this I had to make you GET OUT OF THE CAR, NOW!  NOW! LET’S GO OR THE BUS WILL LEAVE WITHOUT US! And so you didn’t get to ride them very far at all, and neither did your friend who somehow survived the long hot afternoon on only two sips of chocolate milk.  I’m sorry, really, I am, but it wasn’t my fault.  Learn how to steer or you will not, I repeat, WILL NOT be getting your driver’s license when you turn 16.