That Time I Chaperoned a School Trip

I won't be asked back.

Back in 2023, 85 subscribers were sent this post. There’s many more of you now and I think it deserves a wider audience. It’s been edited a bit and I of course added new GIFs. Also, last week I shared my burning desire to be liked by everyone and this one really shows just how unhinged I am. Also also, the essay I was going to send out this week needs more time soooo…command performance! Love you!

My mom friends and I dutifully chaperoning the children. Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

The entire fourth grade was going to the Arboretum and my two best mom friends were going to chaperone.

“I’ll do it too!” I screamed at them on the blacktop at drop off. “Then we can hang out together!”

Clearly I did not understand the role of chaperone.

Volunteer paperwork intact, name tag sticker stuck to the collar of my rain coat, and two best friends flanking me as I signed my name in the Visitor binder in the school office, I was filled with anxiety and emotion as I geared up for my first official school trip. What the hell, anxiety? This was supposed to be fun.

Turns out, you can take the ten year-old girl out of elementary school, but the superficial, social awkwardness, and debilitating desire for peer affirmation is still very much alive in the middle-aged lady mom.

The Big Yellow Bus

The kids were bubbling with chaos and anticipation like a bunch of kernels basting in hot oil. The kids sized up the adults, looking us over and guessing which kid we belonged to while the teacher gave strict instructions on how they were expected to exit the classroom and board the two yellow buses parked outside. I heard not a word of it as I was instantly filled with dread over where I would be seated on the big yellow bus. My son already told me he would be in the back of the bus and I would be…not. My two mom friends, Kari and Erin, would likely sit by their daughters or worse…each other! What if no one wanted to sit by me? What if I tried to sit next to some lonely kid and the kid told me that seat was saved for someone cooler? Like literally anyone would be cooler! Why did I wear these jeans? And these sneakers that looked so cute on the shelf at Nordstrom Rack were way too bright and dumb to wear to a muddy park. What an idiot!

The teacher handed out pieces of paper to each chaperone. Teacher’s love paper. What could have been communicated with a voice, was manifested as three 8.5 x 11 sheets stapled together. And speaking of three sheets, anyone have a little nip in their backpack? Just a little something to take the edge of?

Are we there yet?

Sigh…

Our stacks of paper included the names of the kids we were responsible for. Kari and Erin had five kids each in their group. A couple other moms had four kids. A dad had six! (He's a dad! He can do anything!) I had…two: my son and his best friend. Hmm…must have run out of kids before she got to me.

All Aboard! Well, Almost

I lost both children before we even exited the school and had to guess which bus they were on. Luckily there were only two and even more luckily, I heard a series of rapid fire “your mom” jokes as soon as I walked down the aisle so without even looking at the last row of the bus, I knew I chose correctly.

I knew Kari was on the other bus and Erin hadn’t boarded yet and besides them, I didn’t know anyone. As I made my way down each row, kids stared up at me with expressions that said, “I’d rather sit alone for all of eternity than have to sit by someone else’s loser mom. Keep moving weirdo.” I could feel the thrum of footsteps behind me, eager children trying to situate, each of them much more confident and versed in the cool places to sit on a school bus. I felt the pressure to keep moving, but each step propelled me closer to the back of bus where my sweet baby angel boy’s eyeballs were shooting daggers imploring me to sit the F down and look away!

LOOK AWAY, OLD LADY!

The Cheese Sits Alone. It’s Me. I’m the Cheese.

I dropped into an empty row and immediately pulled out my phone. I’m cool, I’m collected, I’m a goddamn middle-aged lady mom! Why was I sweating? I mean, other than being a middle-aged lady. I pretended to be so absorbed in some cool, new Snapchat feature (Is Snapchat still a thing???) or a $428 face cream from Sephora to notice no one wanted to sit by me. GOOD. When’s the last time any of your grown asses sat on a school bus? Those seats are tiny! Additionally the seat I took happened to be over the wheel well so when I sat down I could rest my chin on my knees. GOOD AGAIN.

Then an amazing thing happened. My son’s teacher walked down the aisle with another mom in toe and told her to sit next to me.

Subtext:

“Can you two losers just sit together so no one else has to be subjected to your sad losery faces?”

Other mom, Sarah, and I immediately bonded over how field trips weren’t as cool as we remembered with this whole being responsible for the safety of children thing. I asked her how many kids she had in her group.

“Oh, thankfully only five,” she said. “How many do you have?”

“Oh, you know…around that many.”

Kids to the side of me where playing a clapping game similar to Miss Mary Mack (from my day) only with PG-13 lyrics and much more coordination than I remember. Kids to the front of me where talking about which sports have the worst drip (what????) and behind me, girls were whispering, which was the worst kind of trigger for some Freaky Friday/Sliding Doors/Time Traveler’s Awkward Tween Daughter From the 1980’s B.S. WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? Turns out, I was about to find out.

Peer Pressure Tested.

Tap, tap, tap on my shoulder.

"Oh! Me? You want to talk to me?”

There were three girls from my son’s class on the bench behind me and another two poking their heads forward from the bench behind them.

“Are you Radar’s mom?” they asked.

“Yes!”

My answer was met with a chorus us Oooohhhhhhh’s and more whispers and giggles.

“You should tell her,” one of the girls said to another girl.

“Tell me what?” I asked, delighted to be told anything. They want to tell me something! They want to talk to meeeeeeeeeee!

The girl who allegedly had something to tell me looked me dead in the eye and said “Sometimes Radar is mean to us.”

“What?!” I shouted. This kid once had a onsie with the word FEMINIST emblazoned across it. He’s mean to girls?

“Okay,” she said. “Not really. Just sometimes. But it’s funny.”

“Yeah,” another one chimed in. “He’s actually pretty funny.”

“Okay,” I said, “Being mean, even if it’s funny, is not okay! No one should be treating you poorly and getting away with it by calling it a joke!”

“No,” another one said, “he is funny. He’s actually not mean. But some of his friends are.”

“He’s actually nice,” another one said. “Everyone wants to sit by him because he falls out of his chair all the time during math tests and it’s funny!”

The hell?

“Girls,” I said, in my best I’m not your mom but I am a mom so listen to me voice, “Is he nice or mean? Mean or funny? Funny and nice? Or funny, but still mean and just masking it with humor? I need to know!”

“He’s funny!”

“Nice.”

“Mia likes him.”

“Ahhhhh, OMG NO I DON’T!” presumably Mia squealed. “You do!”

“Oh, Mia,” I said. “You could do better.”

More squeals.

OMG, they’re laughing! They like me! They think I’m funny!

I saw my rapt and approving audience’s eyes cast upwards as a small, slender shadow darkened the bench behind me.

It was THE TEACHER.

“You all need to keep it down right now,” she said. “You’re distracting the bus driver.”

The teacher was looking at them, but they were looking at me. Uh oh. They think it’s my fault they got in trouble! But I’m a middle-aged lady mom responsible for two children who may or may not be on this bus. I don’t get in trouble!

With my back to the teacher and facing the girls, I made a, “What crawled up her butt face” to show how unreasonable she was being. But the girls only glared at me. Eyes narrowed, lips tight. I was losing them. When did it become not cool to get in trouble on the bus?

The teacher returned to the front of the bus and I returned to my desperate attempts to be liked by a group of 4th grade girls.

“Let’s go back to the boys who are mean to you,” I said. “You know that’s not okay, right? Don’t listen to anyone who says boys are mean to you because they like you. It’s a dangerous way of thinking and fosters unhealthy conditions around love and acceptance. Sometimes people are just mean. It’s their problem, not yours. ”

Yep, definitely lost them.

Desperate Times, Man

“Sure,” one of them said, returning to her much cooler friends. I was being shut out! They were about to cast me as a loser weirdo try-hard with no rizz and the worst drip on the bus! How do you fix your drip if you don’t understand what drip is??? What choice did I have?

“Do you guys want to see baby pictures of Radar¹?”

The girls:

Yes! I was back! Sure it was at the expense of my own child, but I’m sure he’d understand. I was surrounded by squawking 4th grade girls. I had something they wanted. The best drip was right there on my phone.

“Oh,” I said casually. “Here’s one.”

I pulled up my favorite picture. Little baby Radar in a baby bathtub holding a strategically placed rubber ducky.

The girls lost it, screaming and giggling and yelling about how cute he was. This bus was definitely being pulled over. It was out of my hands— my phone, that is. Radar in the tub was being passed from bench to bench causing a frenzy of tiny hands clamped over squealing mouths until my phone made it all the way to the back of bus like it was Kurt Cobain in a mosh pit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit Teacher, please confiscate my phone before…

“MOM!”

I flinched like someone tased me in the back of the neck. I kind of wish someone had rather than face the wrath of my child who was standing up in the back row and pointing right at me.

“YOU. WENT. TOO. FAR.”

Oh crap. Oh no. He was right. It was my fault! I had no alibi. Why did I sign up for this dumb trip? But at least I knew he was on the bus.

“GIRLS! ENOUGH!”

The shadow was back. An angel sent from above.

“Voices down,” the angel commanded. “Everyone, butts in seats and face forward!”

She handed me my phone. “Yours?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I squeaked. Would she believe the girls stole it?

Was I same adult who over-donated for teacher appreciation week every year and sometimes remembered to stock the classroom with snacks? Did I show up to every art show and writing celebration and volunteer to help the kids make Halloween STEM art out of candy pumpkins and toothpicks? Yes. Yes, to all of it. Was I going to be asked to chaperone a school trip ever again? Oh, hell no. Even if it was the best trip in the world, they'd probably cancel it rather than let me be in charge of two kids.

When we arrived at the arboretum, I disembarked in silence and waited for my two charges to get off the bus so the teachers could distribute them to more qualified chaperones and call me an Uber. I braced for the fury—warranted fury— of my child who would surely exact his revenge years later by stationing my wheelchair in front of a YouTube channel dedicated to watching grown men roast each other’s Fortnite games. But the strangest thing happened. My sweet, angry child said, “Hi, Mom,” when he got off the bus and walked past me. I was so surprised I almost lost him and his best friend again in the swell of 4th graders looking for a restroom.

We were sent off in our small groups with a list of items clipped to a clipboard to search for along the serene walking paths. An acorn, a maple leaf, robin. All the things I could see in my front yard without the forty-five minute bus ride, shame, and embarrassment. My group of two merged with Erin’s group of five and another group comprised of all the girls I tried to befriend on the bus were hot on our heels.

“Radar, your mom is so nice,” I overheard one of them say and several others agreed.

Here we go. Instead of acorns and robins, Radar would give them a list of terrible things to discover about me.

“Whatever,” Radar answered. “She’s okay.”

I’M OKAY!

He’s okay!

We’re okay! This what they mean when they say kids are resilient! They can move on from a global pandemic that wrecked a bunch of their formative years and they can forgive and forget a mom who succumbed to peer pressure and sacrificed their privacy and consent in an effort to fit in. Who cares if her “peers” were forty years her junior. Shh, we don’t talk about that.

Just as I was about to throw my arms around my little Moochie Bunny Baby Bear, the teacher called us back for lunch.

Lunch!

OMG! What if no one wanted to sit by me

XO,

Shelly

1. Radar is not my son’s name but

Chris Stanton

and I had a funny joke about this and that’s how he has since been know. Also you all should be subscribed to

Stantonland

. You are, right?