(See part 1 here)

Friday, 8:36 AM, Somewhere in Southern New Jersey (or South Jersey)

I’m on a bus. Been here before. I’m with a bunch of junior high school kids, but it’s not a school bus, what the kids would call a cheese bus.  It’s a step up from that, probably Peter Pan Bus lines (I say that because that’s the one I remember, there were probably others). I don’t remember for sure and I didn’t right it down, but I was probably slightly overcaffeinated, a little sleepy, and deeply nervous. Not just because of the caffeine, but because I was one of the 6 or 7  “responsible adults” on this trip, and that probably felt like a lot.

Oh by the way it’s May 19, 1995. I’m younger. More naive? Less aware of my shortcomings? Not sure. I do know that if somebody asked me to do something like this now I would most likely decline immediately. Back then? Happy to!

Even though I’m well aware even then (now?) that things can instantly go sideways when you’re out in the world with a bunch of kids (your own, probably- other people’s definitely). 

Like the time I took kids on a trip and two of them got in a fistfight on the street, and one of the two JUST WOULD NOT STOP going after the other one. Screaming, spluttering, howling with rage, me wrapped around her keeping her from attacking this other kid, her relentless, like the fucking Terminator, not stopping, not stopping, wait, maybe- nope, still not stopping- and by the way it doesn’t look cool when you are out on the street in New York City and you are wrapped around and restraining a screaming swearing spitting little girl to whom you have no immediately evident connection (and to be clear “student and homeroom teacher” is not immediately evident). And what were the chances, if something like this happened again, that it would be resolved the way it was that time, by having a riderless, bridleless white horse gallop by just then, up 7th Avenue and then west along 59thStreet next to Central Park, top speed, full gallop, like Seabiscuit  at Pimlico, stunning everyone, even the Terminator, into silence, wonder, awe, and then normalcy?  Not high. Low?

I just heard a story the other day about somebody’s great-grandfather, a World War II veteran, who survived two plane crashes during the war, and that wasn’t even counting the time he was on his way home after the war was over and the emergency exit door next to him popped off the plane and his legs were suddenly dangling out into the open air, and as he struggled to keep from being completely sucked out, seatbelt loosening, another vet sitting behind him, a double amputee, crawled forward and pulled him back in. So yeah, two full-on crashes, and then whatever the fuck that was, all happened to the same guy. A kid in Iowa later found his wallet in a cornfield and mailed it back to him

So something like that could happen again. But not likely. The ending would probably be worse. 

Or there was also the time I took some kids to see a play about Frederick Douglas, and the actor playing the horribly racist white overseer was so good (and, let’s be honest, the part he was playing was less than sympathetic to begin with) that when he came out for a curtain call, one of my students spat on him. That’s a pretty awkward post-show backstage apology conversation.

Or the time I took my students to Dorney Park (a theme park and a water park in Pennsylvania that we went to at the end of every school year, because what could be more fun and less nerve-wracking than making sure you’re watching everybody in the wave pool at once?) and security came to get me because one of my kids had tried to walk out of the gift shop with a bunch of sweatshirts under her sweatshirt. Weirdly, she had no idea how they got there. And it puts you in this weird position where part of you is like “Stealing is wrong, and against the law,” and part of you is like, “This is my kid and she was just stealing sweatshirts, so what? Everybody take a breath.”

Or the time I told my boss that I was gonna go check out the brand new Liberty Science Center in New Jersey, across the Hudson River, and she suggested I open the trip up to any kids who wanted to go, during non-school time, which is how I ended up on a Sunday (a goddam Sunday, for shit’s sake- my day off) taking the ferry over there with about seven 8th grade girls who were clearly nerdy enough to wanna do something like that on a Sunday, and we all had a lovely time at the exhibits, and wandering around all day, learning about science and stuff, and getting lunch, and then finally on the ferry ride home they couldn’t help but give away that one of the girls (the one who I would least have expected it from- the nerdiest, but of course that’s why she did it) had gotten her lunch tray together in the cafeteria and then walked out without paying for anything. And now we were on our way home and there wasn’t really a lot I could do- what, turn the boat around? I could scold her, and make her feel bad, which I did. And of course that’s very effective with a kid like that. But that’s exactly what makes it unsatisfying. 

Or the time I took a bunch of kids over to the park by the river, just a nice afternoon of running around in the spring because why not, and as we were walking back to school a guy on a motorcycle rode by in the other direction, and then I heard the motorcycle get louder again and the guy skidded to a stop in front of me and ripped his helmet off and angrily demanded that action be taken against the kid who had, unbeknownst to me, picked up a chunk of asphalt and thrown it at the guy as he rode by. Didn’t hit him, thank  goodness, so I was able to talk him down and promise repercussions. But...

I’m sure this trip is going to be great! Especially given the kids I’m responsible for. I mean, I’m responsible for all of them, that’s the nature of chaperone- cy? - but I’ve been told to pay particular attention to...

NEXT TIME:

I’ve Got My Eye On YOU

Part 1- Chaperoning the choir

Sunday, 3:36 PM. Dynasty Typewriter.

Just came out of an afternoon standup show. Part of a special event, and I got to meet somebody I’ve wanted to for a while, and see some old pals, so those things feel pretty good. As I’m leaving the space, I remember that this place is really proud of its popcorn, and I get some from up front, to munch on my journey up the 101. Nothing better than front seat popcorn. John at the snack bar is a friend of mine, he gives me a bag for free. As I’m heading out, I see somebody who was involved who I don’t know that well. I thank him for being involved, he thanks me back, and once we get that out of the way and I start to head out to my car, he quickly reaches into the bag and snatches a handful of my popcorn.

What?

This feels like a total violation. I didn’t ask if he wanted any. And he just grabbed my finger food with his bare fingers.  It’s tough when you’re forced to share. Especially with people you don’t know.

With that, it’s April, 1995. My boss (I call her my boss, in writing this and in conversation back then, but she’s really my supervisor- the junior high school equivalent of a department head/vice-principal?) tells me the choir teacher wants to speak to me. It doesn’t thrill me when teachers want to see me- this goes all the way back to childhood, it’s never because things are going great.  But sure, okay. 

 I go down to the choir room. The choir teacher (let’s call her Ms. Gregor) is  a short, rotund, highly energized, charismatic woman- exactly the kind of person you would expect the choir teacher to be.  Or maybe, exactly the kind of person you would expect to be a choir teacher. You could look at her, and picture her with her back to the audience, waving her arms in time to the music and mouthing along with the kids, having an absolute fucking blast. She always wore beautiful kente cloth clothing with matching caps, and those plastic and wire frame glasses that remind me of FBI agents in the 60’s, like Willem Defoe in Missippi Burning ( he was 33 in that movie, the same age as Jesus was when he was crucified, which Defoe enacted in The Last Temptation of Christ, which came out the same year, when Defoe was 33. Doesn’t Defoe seem like he was 60 from the first time you saw him? In Platoon he was 31, in To Live and Die in LA he was 30- I’m at the age now where I am fascinated by how old people were when they did certain things, and when I became aware of them. By the way, of course you’ve seen Platoon, but you most likely haven’t seen TO Live and Die in LA, and you really should- I swear it has the greatest car chase ever caught on film , along with a score by Wang Chung! ).  

Ms. Gregor has an advantage with the kids, in that everybody in the choir is there because they want to be there, and if she even starts to think about not letting them be in the choir anymore, they immediately behave perfectly for months at a time (I imagine, at least. I’m jealous, because if I threaten a kid with not being allowed to come to science class anymore, that’s... not a threat).

She wants to know if I will chaperone a choir trip.  The choir is going to participate in a competition at the Kings Dominion Amusement Park in Virginia.  110 students are going to get on three buses (not school buses, the nice ones with velour seats that are supposed to tilt back buyt mostly don’t anymore and bathrooms that you aren’t supposed to actually use because if you do you’ll activate the chemicals that will make the entire bus stink like a busy robot bordello so wait til we get to the rest stop) for eight or nine hours, sleep at a hotel, get up and perform, spend the day in the amusement park,  go back to the hotel for another night (by which time if any of them stayed up all night the first night those darn kids will probably be so exhausted they won’t even be able to keep their eyes open hahaha ), then board the buses again the next day for the eight or nine hour ride back UP the interstate to their homes in New York City.

There are a couple of reasons she wants me to come on this trip:

The school is divided into what they called mini-schools (pretty catchy), like smaller groupings within the school that divided the kids and the teachers.  There are seven of them: The Art School (for kids who were into Art stuff- they could take dance classes, and drawing classes, and drama classes, along with all the regular 3 R’s stuff), the Science School (for kids who were more into the practical aspects of the world, not pie in the sky dreamers), the Discovery Program (for kids with special needs- some of them had physical and/or mental disabilities, and others were classified as special needs because of behavioral problems, which without getting into a whole thing about it always seemed dicey to me- like, one person’s behavioral problem could be somebody else’s difficult but charming wiseass-  where do you draw the line? It was definitely stigmatizing, and one way of dealing with kids that people just didn’t care for), the Columbus Academy (which was for kids who thought they were smarter than everybody else), the Computer School (which was for kids who actually were smarter than everybody else- the ones who could do more with computers in 1995 than program 10 PRINT HELLO 20 GO TO 10), the Bilingual Program (for native Spanish speakers- and by the way, as for me, I’m tri- lingual- I’ll try any...), and MY program, which was called the Environmental Studies Program.  

The Environmental Studies Program was for kids with a high degree of climate change awareness, a distaste for corporate pollutants, a willingness to work closely with whistleblowers no matter what the personal cost, and the financial backing to purchase their own pH balance testing kits, with which they would monitor... just kidding. They named it The Environmental Studies Program after they got funding for it but before they knew what it was. Thta was right before I was hired. No attempt was ever made to get the programmiing for the students to match the name of the mini-school. It was just four classes, about 120 students at any given time: a lot of kids who were asked to leave other programs for disciplinary reasons but hadn’t been classified as special needs (yet), or kids who didn’t get into other programs, or kids who transferred into the school mid-year, or kids who didn’t have particularly engaged parents to advocate for them, or kids who just accidentally ended up there (nobody WANTED to get into that program, nobody applied for it).  A lot of the kids were difficult, weren’t always on their best behavior. And everybody knew they were the kids who didn’t get to go anywhere else. Everybody else in the school referred to the kids in the E.S.P. program as the Especially Stupid People, even some of the teachers. They were the Island of Misfit Toys. And they knew it. BU tthey were mostly just sweet 11 and 12 and 13 year olds trying to figure out how to get by. I loved them.  Well, most of them. 

Ms. Gregor tells me she’s gonna take some of my kids on the trip, but she’s  nervous about it. She knows they can be difficult, and she can’t kick anybody out of the choir when they’re eight hours away from the school, and she wants somebody who knew them along. Most of this is unsaid, but I get the subtext.

She’s also bringing a hundred and ten kids total, like I said, and has three Moms and herself to be in charge, but no male chaperones. I would cover that.

There are also a couple of other kids coming, kids I don’t know but who are particularly difficult to deal with in the programs they are in. And by difficult, to be clear, they have major behavioral problems. That’s how you say it as a teacher. Or you say they are fucking huge pain in the ass who never shuts the fuck up or sits the fuck down or does what the fuck they’re supposed to. Either or. 

I would be assigned to pay close attention to those kids too, just in case, and one of them would have to share a room with me- that was the only way they would let him come on the trip. That was one of the things I always really liked about Ms. Gregor, in particular, but also lots of teachers. Sure, some of them are dedicated clock-punchers, civil servants who come in every day talking about how much longer they have til their pensions kick in, but their were also teachers who believed that every kid deserved a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, ad infinitum, and if you just kept giving them chances they might eventually get it. Compassion, mercy, forgiveness, optimism, hope... nobody has more of these qualities than good junior high school teachers. 

I’m in.  Let the chips fall where they may. And they will fall. Abso fucking lutely.

TO BE CONTINUED

Next: I’ve been to a rodeo before. This... ain’t my first?