Everything You Always Wanted to Know About a Middle School Fieldtrip

Yesterday, we took the kids on another field trip.  My little town is an hour in any direction away from another town, and those towns are smaller than this one.  The nearest Wal-Mart is 2.5 hours away.  Suffice it to say any field trip we go on require at least a two and a half hour bus ride.  As I mentioned in my last post, the smells of the bus are varied, everything from sweat to lotion to chips (I'll come back to the chips).

There are a few rules on the bus:

1. Boys in front, girls in back (just so there's no hanky panky)

2. No food on the bus because the kids have trouble picking up their own trash

3. No touching each other horse play style

4. Sit

Other than that they're allowed to wear hats, use electronics, talk, sing, laugh, pass electronic notes (i.e. writing a note/memo on their phone and passing it back and forth on the bus).

I spent the day alternately laughing hysterically and being furious depending on whether or not they decided to follow the above rules.

Here are some interesting things:

1. My hair was done no less than 7 times.

2. I actually said the phrase, "You don't poop out of your foot" when a kid kept insisting he was sitting on his bottom and was really sitting on his foot.

3. I used my talent for sniffing out food and had to yell to the back of the bus that, "I smell chips! If you have chips and I find them, I WILL eat them.  I love chips. I think you have Doritos."

4. I heard this phrase come out of nowhere from a kid who just cracks me up: "I do not like tie dye tshirts in case you were asking."

5. We had to stop after driving for only an hour because of a potty emergency.  The town's population was equal to the number of kids we had on the buses.  About a hundred.  The teeny tiny town store had only one bathroom and obviously couldn't accommodate the 60 kids who just HAD to go.  So we circled around town trying to find a bathroom and ended up at the school whose staff was kind enough to let us all run in and potty.

6. On the way back, a girl on my bus really did have to go.  She kept screaming, "It's giving me goosebumps! I have to go so bad!!! I just pushed my bellybutton and I felt a little come out!"  We passed a porta-potty and she slammed herself against the window and screamed, "NOOOOOO!"  We finally stopped, and I've never seen that girl run so fast. And she's an athlete.

7. They aren't allowed to eat on the bus.  Asking these kids to go for two and a half hours without eating is like, well I don't know what it's like because I don't think there's really anything to compare it to.  After an hour they were SO HUNGRY.  Like, "I'm going to pass out if I don't eat something RIGHT NOW," kind of hungry.  "How can you not let us eaaaaaat???"  "This is SO UNFAIR" kind of hungry.  I've never seen anything like it.  An entire bus full of starving children.  

8. We had a spell-off between two of the kids for the last few minutes of the bus ride and lots of people paid attention.  Yes, we were that bored.  But it was really cool.  Neither one could spell "patriocisity." Mostly because I made it up.

9. Overall, lots of fun.  Though I wouldn't want to do it every week!

10. On a semi-related note, the chipmunk from this post is alive and well.  Well being a relative term since we're pretty sure Jojo (that's his name) suffered some brain damage from the rock.  He lets you pet him.  I got to pet a chipmunk!!!!

And there you have it, everything you didn't know you wanted to know about middle school field trips!