Just the Highlights

Jon Stewart was right. I was watching an episode of the Daily Show tonight when I came home from school, and he was talking about the birth of his baby girl. He said he used to think the song the children are the future was just a trite song, and now he understands that it's really a threat...

Today Becky and I took 35 8th graders to the public library downtown, via public transit. The library is amazing--the largest west of the Mississippi River, with 9 floors I think. 98, or maybe even 99% of our children were AWESOME on the trip. Some should never be let out in public, or at least not with today's behavior. Here are some of the highlights:

• While riding light rail, even after the 4th or 5th time we stopped and started with a jolt, the kids still acted surprised that they would be thrown around
• One boy, M, after being thrown around, actually shouted "Aw, I just smashed my balls!!"
• Same boy, after the balls episode, stood up to get off the train and whacked a smallish woman with his backpack. He apologised, but the look on her face said he would never be forgiven
• From outside the library there's a skylight that looks down on a study area. Our kids hung out above it, and noticed there was a guy studying organic chemistry. The kids actually composed a song about organic chemistry to sing to get the guy to look at them. It sounds a lot like the "in the year 2000" song from Conan O'Brian's show.
• Someone "accidentally" pushed the call button on light rail and surprise, surprise, the conductor answered. doh
• M thought that his library card was "pickpocketed" from him. He came up to me and Becky and said "Ah! I lost my library card." We said "oh, really?" not a bit surprised. "Yes!" he said, "I was walking and this guy bumped into me and it was gone." Of course, the man took nothing else, not his wallet, etc., just the library card.
• One of our previously home-schooled kids set off the alarms as we were leaving the library, and he had to go back and re check out the millions of items in his backpack, while the time before our train home quickly slipped away. Appearantly he didn't check out his books right (self check-out). Somehow, when stuff like this happens I always want to ask him "Is this because you were home-schooled?"
  
• My peanut butter and jelly sandwich was so smooshed and compacted it was kind of gross. However, the strawberry milk I packed was great, thanks to UHT pasteurization.

I have a love/hate relationship with field trips.