Field Trip Gone Awry

It all started this morning when S came into B's room, where I was sitting avoiding being alone. S proceeded to tell us what happened to her yesterday afternoon. It seems her car began to fail when she attempted to leave work yesterday. Luckily, she was able to get into the mechanic right away and someone from school could follow her there, then take her home. As luck would have it her car started to malfunction on the way to the garage. Little by little important components were shutting down. She managed to roll into a parking spot at the mechanic's before her car bit the dust. Needless to say, I told her about Mercury's current state of affairs (retrograde). She laughed at me, but little did she know the real joke would come much, much later.

This Wednesday, Cinco de Mayo, was also baseball field trip day. I couldn't be more pleased. All I had to do was teach from 8 to 9:15 and then sweat my ass off in the blazing sun with nineteen ducklings in my charge. No biggy, I had been extra prepared this year by forewarning them of my disinterest in shuttling them to and from the bathroom. I thought,"this time this trip will be great", having already forgotten the forboding news I had delivered just this morning.

We left the classroom at 9:20, when we got to the bus loop there were two buses. I led my ducklings onto the bus, we all sat down and got comfortable. Then another class boarded. Not too long after that someone decided we didn't need two buses we were going to all cram into one. My gut told me I liked the bus I was on, but I was outnumbered. We boarded the other bus. It was so packed there were three kids in every seat. We sat two to a seat. We departed. Once we were on the highway something started beeping. At first I thought one of the kids had bumped an emergency exit lever. I scoped out the scene but nothing. The bus driver did not seem phased. In fact, I observed no registered response at all. Eventually, B said, "is there something I could do about that" (gesturing to the beep, which proceeded to speed up like a bomb).

"No," she replied, "It's been in the shop six times."

That is comforting I thought and we drove on. Luckily, we made it to the game. To my great pleasure I had successfully discouraged my students from making unwarranted trips to the restrooms. It was expectedly hot, we all drank tons of water. We left. We got on the bus with an extra teacher. So now three of us would have to share one seat. Back on the highway only minutes and the beep starts beeping again. Beep, beep, beep and suddenly we are steadily slowing down in the third lane from the right. Oh yes, at 1:00 p.m. in sunny South Florida we were breaking down on I-95 with a bus full of 78 fourth graders.

We sat for a moment. The driver radioed others. Then it got even better. A fire rescue truck showed up, followed by a full blown fire truck. No one has told us anything. We began documenting the situation (for future storytelling purposes). I went out photographing only to find a huge gasoline leak at the rear. The firefighters had poured some white powder to prevent this puddle of gas from proceeding, just as we had been stopped from proceeding on our course. Then a school district mechanic arrived. Instead of sending a bus at 1:30 when the students should be dismissed from school in thirty minutes, they sent a mechanic. Any laymen could see that this bus was headed for the school bus graveyard. With all this time to kill and all of these 4th graders to entertain we decided to put on the radio. 102.3, it's the best for hip-hop. Then I lip-synced (not actually knowing the words-so it was more like a kung-fu movie) and danced up and down the aisle of the bus. And that must have worked because just a moment after that another school bus arrived. We made it back exactly at 2:00 and everything was fine.