Girl, You Must Be Field Trippin'

Daughter and I just spent three days in Colonial Williamsburg for her fourth-grade class trip. I passed the background check (I guess an unnatural obsession with Rick Springfield doesn't make one unfit to care for children), so her school let me be one of the chaperones.

It was a great trip. You just can't beat living museums for educational value. Recreations and actors in authentic costumes performing activities how they were done in the past really bring history alive. The colonial wigmaker guzzling a Big Gulp and sporting a cleavage tattoo kinda brought me back into the 21st century, though.



Daughter at Jamestown Settlement



I learned a lot--and not just about colonial times. After more than 20 collective hours on a bus with a bunch of fourth graders and sharing a hotel room with three little girls, I learned that:


• I love kids--as long as they're my own
• Bus bathrooms are an endless source of fascination for 10-year-olds
• All chaperones are not created equally (apparently, laziness isn't detected during the screening process) 
• I may or may not be smarter than a fourth grader, but I definitely have better hygiene
• Some people shouldn't reproduce; if they decide to pop out kids anyway, they shouldn't inflict the results of their crappy parenting on others (i.e., you screwed 'em up, YOU take care of 'em)
• In fourth grade, "boyfriend-girlfriend" means never talking on the phone and never, ever being seen together in public (basically the kind of relationship some grown men would kill to have with their girlfriends)
• My stress level is inversely proportionate to the percentage of charge left on my iPhone