My Second Grade Pencil

I know I promised you an Ask The Dad today, yesterday, two days ago, but one e-mail I received--in a misguided attempt at getting real advice--requested a response not from me but from The Mom, and Monday night, when I passed the laptop over to The Mom, she promptly coughed a lung onto it. So that will have to wait a few more days. But as you know, marriage is nothing if not a competition, so that same Monday night, as I looked at my wife drowning in her own phlegm, I said, "Oh yeah? If you think you are suffering, watch this!" and I promptly signed myself up as a chaperone on Kathryn's second grade field trip.

I won.

Actually, ever since Kathryn made the extremely inconsiderate decision of contracting epilepsy (One week seizure free, by the way! Thank you and thank you again for your concern and well-wishes.) her school, fearing an episode away from home, has been pestering me to come along on field trips, and they have not been very gracious accepting my normal response: laughing and hanging up. But that boost of seizures Kathryn had this month made me rethink the issue and, before I knew it, I was calling the school to see if there was room for one more person on the bus. And, god help me, there was.

Second graders should not be allowed to talk about intangible events or objects. Their conversation should be limited to concrete objects that they are holding in their hands at that moment. For example, if someone happens to be holding a pencil, they should be allowed to say, "I have a pencil." If they choose to, they could describe the pencil. "It is yellow. It has an eraser." At this point, others could chime in. "Yes, and it has a silver metal band. The band holds the eraser to the wood." Or, if someone happens to have a pencil of their own, they could produce it and say a few things about it as well. "My pencil is blue," and so on.

Under no circumstances should they be allowed to talk of pencils they have seen, or once had, or heard about from someone else. Because I guarantee you, each and every second grader has seen, or had, or heard about the coolest pencil in the world, and they will not rest--or lower their voice--until their pencil is crowned the champion of all pencils, and award that apparently goes to the student lying the most and yelling the loudest when an adult finally breaks down and asks everyone to please shut up. FOUR FEET LONG WITH SCALES LIKE A SNAKE AND FEATHERS ON TOP THAT REALLY ERASE AND LIGHTS THAT RUN UP AND DOWN THE SIDES AS YOU WRITE AND AN ALARM THAT SOUNDS WHEN YOU MAKE A MISTAKE AND--- and I was looking around for my own 'coolest pencil in the world,' one sharp enough to end my miserable life then and there.

When I got home, I made a sign out of cardboard nailed to a wooden stake reading "BULLSHIT!" If I am ever coerced into attending another of these field trips, I will take it with me and hold it up as needed.

Which will be always.

Comments

[That Blonde Chick]

Yeah? Well, I really DO have that pencil.

[Mort's Mom]

Excuse me but I have a British pencil. It is so well bred that it only writes in sonnet form. When being used to rub out a mistake, it coughs politely and in the finely executed tones of our dear Queen apologises for having made such an inconsiderate error in the first place. Oh, and it always puts back the second "u" in "humour" and the "s" in apologise.

Much love to Katherine. Good to hear she can still drive you crazy.

[Mort's Mom]

Rats, I spelled Kathryn's name incorrectly. My pencil may be the bees knees but my typing is clearly substandard.
Sorry.

[Thank you for antidepressants]

OMG, Mort's Mom should have her own blog.

Dad, you are official now. Surviving a field trip is a rite of passage into adultship. Congratulations.

[Zuffie]

I'm picturing a bus full of second graders screaming "BULLSHIT" at the top of their lungs for an entire day... :o) Awesome!

[Mort's Mom]

"OMG, Mort's Mom should have her own blog."

Ah-hem.
Mort's Mom does.
http://www.kim.shropshireborn.com
Self-advertising just feels so very wrong. Not done doncherknow.

[Trudie]

I'll go on field trips with my Gr. 9:ers any ol' day, so long as I don't have to ever experience one with second graders!

[Swirl Girl]

Anyone with a 2nd grader knows ...this is why we all don't home school!

Kathryn, by the way, is a brave little girl. And, you and your family are brave 'big' people. I can't imagine what you are going through. Thanks goodness that your daughter still has that amazing ability to compare just pencils and not more intangible things.

www.swirlgirlspearls.blogspot.com

[LiteralDan]

In what I suppose is a backwards, twisted kind of way, this made me look forward to chaperoning a field trip in a couple years-- the logic of little kids amuses and fascinates me, and I relish opportunities to manipulate and control it.

An exhausting day, no doubt, but one full of lots of potential blog posts, at least, right?

[Brian]

To be clear, Kathryn was not one of the children prone to hyperbole and escalation. In fact, as those around us scaled up the volume and ratcheted up the I-swear-to-gods, she turned to me and said, I kid you not, "You see what I have to put up with?"

[R]

That makes me heart Kathryn even more.

I hope to have a kid or two in the near-ish future (if two, preferably not at the same time), but heaven help us all if I ever have to go on a field trip.

[Katherine]

It is a lot for her to put up with. Your Kathryn - she's an old soul.

[tripleblessings]

Uh-huh. You have perfectly described many of our dinner-time family conversations, and those of all our kids' friends. We have triplets in Grade Two.

If it's not wild exaggeration and competing to tell the best stories, it's endless detailed talk about Webkinz, and how to play the games on W website, and which W pets they want to buy next with their allowance, and which school friend has which W pet, and on and on blah blah blah blah - all 3 talking at once at top volume. Ugh!

At least all second graders seem to do this - I'm glad it's not just our kids who compete for attention, and talk your ears off!

[Michell]

That just might get you kicked off the bus.

[Dr.Cason]

No,

I think other parents would be pestering to use it themselves.

I can't believe we cooed over the first words only to find ourselves covering our ears for the remaining years.

[Jordan]

As a driver of 2nd graders in a carpool, I can say that you speak The Truth. Although, like Kathryn, my son doesn't quite know how to react to the incessant bragging and one-up-manship. It's just awful!

[Renata]

This explains an odd conversation that for some reason is the clearest of my second-grade year. Standing in line for milk, fellow second-graders and I were talking about how long we'd possessed the shoes we were wearing. "I've had these shoes for a month!" "Well I've had my shoes since first grade!" Finally one gal tried to trump us all with "I've had these shoes for TWENTY YEARS!"

[rachel]

So. I was field trip mom recently, and rather than the bus, I rode into the museum with another mom. Within about 10 minutes of the museum she says to me, “dude, seriously, I gotta take a piss.” I’m thinking, well, we’re almost at the museum. Then we had to drive around a bit to find a parking spot, and she repeats herself. We find a spot 3 blocks from the museum and we’re walking past beautiful old houses that have been converted into lawyers offices, etc, when she suddenly says, “dude, I’m gonna go pee over there” and she crosses the street toward one such house. Walks past the house and into the parking lot. SHE PEED IN THE BUSHES AT THE BACK OF THE PARKING LOT - BEHIND CARS. While I waited, stunned, across the street. Beside the capital buildings. Then proceeded to cross the street back to me, cheerfully chatting away while we walked the remaining block to the museum. there are benefits to taking the bus!

[Velma]

As the mother of a 2nd grader, I feel your pain. Every time I have to carpool her friends, trying to follow the "conversation" feels exactly like jamming a pencil in my ear repeatedly.

[Anne Prince]

What a bunch of complainers....you have not lived until you have chaperoned your kids 6th grade end of elementary school field trip. Or their 6th grade mixer at the middle school (do they still call them mixers? Am I dating myself?)

You think that 2nd graders are loud - try a bunch of hormonally challenged 11-13 year olds. Ye gads!!!!

[russ]

Isn't it amazing how competitive second graders can be ... with things that aren't even theirs?

[Scattered Mom]

You may never believe that I have worked with 2nd graders for years. By choice. And I HAD TO go on their field trips, and I was never allowed to yell Bullshit, no matter how tempting.

One of them was even inconsiderate enough to give me chicken pox.

The bus rides are the worst, though. Really.

[Krupskaya]

At a baseball game, my husband and I laughed ourselves silly listening to the seven-year-olds behind us argue about how black a peanut was, and then how black any given peanut eaten at a baseball game might be, and how one of them had a peanut once that was SO BLACK, if there was a black-peanut contest, it would have WON.

[Clare]

Your arm might get tired real fast.

[loren]

Am I the only one that caught Mort's Moms unintentional inuendo of "rubbing one out," or am I just the only one perverted enough to bring it up?

As soon as my kids get anywhere near going on field trips, I'm promptly signing up for a job/volunteer position/blood donation that makes me unavailable every day from drop-off to pick-up.