Saved by the Kids

I was riding the bus to work the other day when some sort of youth field trip invaded. There must have been twenty odd kids, 7 or 8 years old, and three adult chaperones. I had been reading at the back of the bus and soon found myself surrounded. All things considered, they weren’t too badly behaved and I was able to keep reading. Then one of the adults says, “Hey kids, do you want to show the people on the bus how good we can sing?”

I froze in horror. If I had to endure 100 Bottles of Bear on the Wall all the way to the Space Needle, I would strangle that chaperone.

To my immense relief, the kids yelled out in unison, “Noooooooo!!!!” The chaperone, crestfallen, let it drop. I silently cheered for the kids. They had shown way more sense than the adult in charge. Like anyone commuting on the hot and smelly bus wanted to be serenaded by screaming kids at 9 in the morning. I hope Mr. Chaperone learned a lesson that day.

2 thoughts on “Saved by the Kids

  1. one thing about adults…

    we are always trying to share with kids things that existed in our time

    balsa wood airplanes at the five and dime
    or battle ship with graph paper instead of the metal version of the sixties, the plastic version of the seventies, or electronic version of the eighties

    songs like that did not really make sense in my time
    so much of the seventies was parents trying to raise their kids on the ideas of the fifties
    it almost worked because we were all watching Happy Days
    but the times were different

    the times are different now
    if you want the kids to sing
    they have a song that they would all want to sing
    but please… not in public at the expense of others

    I bet the bus driver would have stopped the bus
    okay… wrong washington

  2. while I am blogging on another person’s blog…

    I am a parent of two boys
    so often I do those things that I hated other people for doing
    like walking slowly with a big stupid smile on my face as my toddler runs around the airport

    long before I was a parent I worked with kids in an afterschool program in colorado

    as part of my job I would go with the the school bus to pick the kids up at the local elementary school

    it was my job to keep them in line

    usually the most quiet child would be rewarded for being quiet
    being quiet is easier for some than for others
    so I tried not to just reward children for their nature
    but also reward them for their effort
    it worked pretty well
    then one day I thought that it would be fun to switch it up
    I decided that the kid who was the most loud would get off the bus first
    while the person who was least loud would be last
    this was proposed
    the kids agreed
    the bus driver allowed it

    IT WAS INSANE!
    boys and girls screaming at the top of their lungs as loud as they could
    high pitches that could nearly shatter glass
    along with the masses of basic screams

    children turned red from the expenditure
    while other children turned red and cried
    it was painful
    my ears were ringing
    but there was no stopping it
    there was no way to try and put the genie back in the bottle
    I tried consoling the kids who were crying
    I glance at the bus drive who had always liked me
    but may have known that I was a little different in my methods shooker her head and smiled

    we arrived
    the children were released in the order of both effort and nature
    maybe after the kids who were trama tized to tears

    but that was a school bus
    with no one on the bus but the kids

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