I am writing today in the form of a public service announcement: Do NOT volunteer to go on the bus for your Kindergartener’s pumpkin patch field trip. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I wasn’t warned, and I came unprepared, willing, vulnerable, and offered my supervisory services at my own will. And here I am, two weeks later, still shaken by the whole experience, and have yet to lower my Prozac prescription to it’s normal level. This is my story:

Let’s rewind for a moment, and go back to the blissful, colorful days that were the beginning of my youngest child’s first year of school. Since cutting back on my work schedule, I had devoted myself to being a more “involved” parent, and I signed up for everything. :Sure, I’ll work in both kids classrooms! Yes to being the basket-putter-togetherer for the school auction! Yes to PTA meetings! Yes to volunteering to chaperone the Girl Scouts to the fire station” (they didn’t have to twist my arm too hard on that one)! I had become a yes-to-everything parent, and was gleefully excited when I volunteered to chaperone for my son’s first field trip, and ecstatic when I found out that I got to ride with him and the other Kindergarteners on the school bus. I had visions of sitting next to my little guy, my arm around him, in our matching “Cougar” t-shirts (I’m not making that up- that really is his school mascot, and we really do have matching t-shirts with the word emblazoned across the front of them), and singing the “the Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round!” in chorus with all of the other little people and teachers on the way to the cheery, lovely pumpkin patch!

That couldn’t be further from what really happened. I walked into the classroom, bursting with pride and excitement, ready to mark this milestone in my son’s scholarly experience, and I’m handed a list of the children that I would be responsible for, for the remainder of the field trip. Now, every class has a few kids that a teacher would politely describe as “oh, Johnny, he’s a little bit of a handful….” as the child runs screaming at the top of their lungs like a banshee leaving behind a whirlwind of destruction. On my list, was my own kid, and every single one of these kids. With a sigh, I told myself- “you GOT this, Girl! You are supermom! You can handle this- no sweat!” And I wrangled all of my kids to the bus, got them on, got them buckled, and thought I had it all together, and off we went.

Two minutes into the bus ride, (there were over 70 Kindergarteners- the noise was deafening!), the little girls that I was sitting next to, start chanting at the top off their screechy little voices, “Fas-TER! Fas-TER!” to the bus driver, at the front of the bus. “After 13 girls started chanting in unison around me, and their high-pitched voices are bouncing off the walls of the metal bus and reverberating into my skull, I politely whispered in my most “nice teacher” voice to the little girl next to me, “Friend, we want the bus driver to be able to concentrate, so let’s not be too loud, okay? Thank you for being a good listener.” The little girl pushed up in her seat, so that she was nearly eye-level with me, and right in front of my face, while looking me square in the eye, she yelled, “FAS-TER!” as loud as her little voice could muster. This started a chain reaction of all of the kids in my whole back section of the bus shrieking in a louder, higher tone, “FAS-TER! FAS-TER!” Taken aback, I puzzled- maybe I’m out of the loop or overreacting, and I certainly don’t want to be the “mean mommy that came on the field trip”.  So, I suck it up, and practice some zen breathing for the remainder of the ride to the farm, while 16 little kids around me yell-chant for the driver to go “fas-TER!”

When we got there, as soon as we got off the bus, all five of my little boys were off and running in five different directions. Mind you, this is not a pumpkin patch at a field with nice little rows of pumpkins, this is at an actual farm, with farm animals, farm equipment, drainage ditches, irrigation ditches, a running creek, barbed-wire fences, and a corn maze. They might as well have called it the “pumpkin and every possible type of predicament that you read about happening to kids, like getting fingers chopped off by moving farm equipment or falling into a running creek or getting lost in a huge field of corn and starring in a terrifying Stephen King movie about bratty, undisciplined children patch”. Once I managed to corral all of my little boys again, we all sat together to hear a song about dirt, and learn about how to carry a pumpkin correctly, so that you don’t fall and trip and the stem of the pumpkin stabs you in the chest, piercing your aorta, or your friend’s (true safety demonstration performed by one of the workers at the farm).

Then it was time for all of the little ones to go off to find their pumpkins. As all of the other parents and their little charges traveled in perfect little groups to choose their perfect pumpkin, my five hellions scattered everywhere. One was hiding in a drainage ditch behind a barbed-wire fence, two ran into the corn maze, one ran toward the animals, and one ran off to find his mother, who was also there, but not chaperoning or on the bus (clearly, someone had forewarned her). After a complete rigmarole of getting my group together, choosing their pumpkins, and getting them back onto the bus, I had yelled for them so many times, that by this time my voice resembled Kate Winslet’s at the end of  ”Titanic”, when she’s trying to be rescued and she’s the only survivor on a door floating in the ocean, and croaking out the words “Come back, Come back”, but no actual voice is coming out because she’s so hoarse. That was me. Only in my case, no one was coming to my rescue.

I plopped onto the bus, after I strapped all of my little kids in their seats, and did a quick glance to make sure I was no where near the chanting little girls from the earlier trip. As the teacher reads “roll” to make sure that all of the kids are present, and not being trapped in a corn silo, or hiding in a well somewhere, I sit back in my seat, and I draw in a deep cleansing breath. Right as I start to exhale, I hear the two boys in the seat behind me start to pick at eachother. I crane myself over the back of my seat, pinching a nerve in my neck, and warn the boys to keep their hands to themselves, or they will be in trouble when we get back to school, and before I could finish the sentence, one of them looked at me with a sneer, and kicked the back of my seat, and he kicked it hard. Dumb move on his part, as I saw him grimace, and feel for his new bruise, and I said in my “nice-teacher voice”, “Oh, Friend, we’re not supposed to kick things, that’s not best behavior,” and turned back around in my seat, with a little smirk, thinking to myself, “Haha- that’s what he gets”. Next thing I know, the kicking kid starts wailing, “IIIIIIIII waaaaaaaaaaaaaaant my mooooommmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!” “Waaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” “Mooooommmmmmmmyyyyyy!” As loud as he possibly can, right into the back of my head and into my ears and my brain. It wasn’t just crying, it was the piercing kind of whining that a kid that is throwing a tantrum does to cajole his parents into giving into what he wants, and they give in just for the sake of their own sanity. That doesn’t work in my house, but that’s a whole ‘nother Oprah. So for precisely 37 minutes, and 42 seconds, I was trapped in a moving metal tube, surrounded by seventy 6-year-olds, and a kid screeching in my ear and kicking the back of my seat. I can’t tell you the name of the bottle of wine that I single-handedly finished that night, or how many ibuprofen I took to quell the pounding in my head, but I can tell you that although I continue my servitude in the Kindergarten classroom, I will never again volunteer to be on the bus.