2nd GRADE CLASS TRIP: PART I

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My mother didn’t trust other people with her children. No teacher or chaperone could keep good enough care of me outside of the classroom. She’d seen enough news stories about little kids on field trips in the boondocks being snatched up by men hiding in brushes and behind trees. She also knew that I was mostly oblivious to my surroundings and could very easily fall prey to weirdo pedophiles if left to my own devices.

As a result, I couldn’t join my kindergarten classmates when they went to Bear Mountain in upstate New York. I have no idea what there is for a bunch of five-year-olds to do in Bear Mountain, but back then I imagined that the trip involved 1) mountain climbing and 2) playing with koala bears. You see, I was under the impression that koala bears hung out in trees everywhere outside of Jersey City. I was so obsessed with koalas that, in the first grade, I told this one kid—I forget his name—that I’d visited Pakistan over the summer (a big fat lie) with my parents, brothers and seven older sisters (another lie) and we’d seen dozens of koalas (koalas in Pakistan? Er, not so much)…and that my grandmother even kept a couple as pets in her Islamabad home (ahem).

Yah, I was totally jealous of the little punks, who were scaling Bear Mountain and hugging koala bears while I watched soaps on television.

I don’t remember where the class went the following year but, once again, I had to stay at home and play with my imaginary sisters while my classmates got to hang out with koalas. Man, that blew.

By the time the second grade field trip came around, I was, at 7 years old, older and wiser— I realized that there weren’t koalas frolicking in the trees of the United States. I also realized that it was about time I ventured to the great outdoors with my classmates to see what these fancy, mysterious field trips were all about.

So I threw a tantrum.

And I won.

My mother, still certain that people were as good as plastic lawn ornaments when it came to watching children who were not their own, decided to chaperone our field trip. While the previous two years had seen giant chartered buses arrive at our school to take my classmates to exotic destinations (can you get more exotic than Bear Mountain? I don't think so), tahat particular year, we walked to Liberty State Park. Even back then I knew that was extremely ghetto and I may even have sulked a bit but the wind whipping through my hair on the subsequent ferry ride from the park cheered me up. Our destination: the Statue of Liberty.

*Read all about the nerd's weirdo first school field trip next time on Revengeofthenerddd.blogspot.com!