Welfareloser's Blog

so, the field trip sucked SO HARD. i am not exaggerating to say that spending three hours in a doctor’s office is consistently more fun. the field trip was at curtis orchard, a local institution with a pumpkin patch, an apple orchard, hay-bale maze, hay rides, goats to feed, cats roaming, amish candy, a playground, etc.

i went along on the twits’ field trip, figuring i pretty much trusted evilgremlin’s public school not to lose or break my child. the twits, however, go to a cash-strapped pre-school in a church basement that is run entirely by one very heroically overworked woman, and any parent volunteers simply aren’t going to watch my kids like *I* watch my kids. so, i gave up a morning of being naked in bed for this shit (which did not improve my mood any.)

immediately upon our arrival, the twits’ spider-senses got triggered, and they found eg’s class and ran over there to be nuisances. as i approached, i saw that EG had just succeeded in leading his entire class in what looks like a german drinking song, swaying in grand beer-hall tradition with mugs of apple cider held high. spazmonkey clambered up onto one of the bench seats, pushing EG’s classmates out of the way and trying to convince someone to give him a mug of juice, while dramaqueen ran up to hug EG’s teacher and call her sister (which is what he calls all females that he doesn’t call mommy or gramma, but it always makes me cringe when the little cracker does it to a black woman.)

so when the rest of the preschool parents arrive and the class is all together, we head inside for “the tour.” apparently, “the tour” is a lot of fun for 6-7 year olds. not so much for 3-5 year olds. here’s how the hour was spent: 1/2 hour of some woman lecturing – WITH NO VISUAL AIDS WHATSOEVER, MIND YOU – about the natural history of the honey bee. uh, yeah. that was fun. the five year olds were okay, the 4 year olds were bored, and the 3 year olds were all in tears. this was helped along by the fact that the dumb bitch giving the lecture started it off with “AND WHEN WE’RE ALL FINISHED HERE YOU GET DONUTS AND JUICE.” so the three year olds spent the half hour bitching about “where my donuts at?”

spazmonkey mostly just squirmed in his seat and gave himself whiplash looking at anything but the lecturer. but he was quiet and mostly kept his butt planted on the seat, so i was pretty impressed. the one time he opened his mouth was when the lecturer brought out “the smoker,” and explained that they lit a fire in in to smoke out the bees so they could take the honey. after appearing not to understand a word the woman had said for the last 20 minutes, he stood up on his seat, raised his hand over his head, and said, “UMM, MA’AM? YOU NEED THE MATCHES FOR FIRE THE SMOKE.” the woman, looks at him like she’s confused, so spazmonkey looks to dramaqueen for confirmation. dramaqueen looks up from his lap, where he has had his two index fingers quietly engaging in conversation with each other, and says, “yes. kaboom.” grinning, spazmonkey looks back at the woman and declares, “YETH! DAT’S WIGHT, KABOOM!” emphasizing that last with a spazzy little jump.

the next half hour involved going to the back room, where methusela curtis spent a half hour lecturing in front of the apple washer. which was turned off. her lecture went something like this “and weeee’ve ahd this machine since, oh, i don’t know, 1953? no, that can’t be right, we got it before the cider press, so it must have been, oh, i don’t know, 52… anybody know what kind of apples these are? no, not red, i mean whaat kind? well, these are jonathan apples. which means they’re sweet and crispy and the skin is tart.”

at this point, poor little dramaqueen, who has been making a heroic effort not to cry after being told he was going on a field trip to see apples and pumpkins and has seen jack shit, reached for an apple, got yelled at by methusela, and finally lost it. he went from his lower lip pooching out every now and then as he asked again about the donut or an apple, to full-on wailing. methusela helpfully told me to take him outside. so i took him and spazmonkey and the three other very pissed-off 3-year-olds out into the main store, bought them a bunch of candy, and set them loose on the playground. they were quite happy for the next ten minutes.

then it was time to go pick out their pumpkins. this involved walking past the really good looking, huge pumpkins, and being told not to touch them. we arrived at the bins of sorry-looking little shitty pumpkin-runts, where they were told to pick one out, then had it immediately taken away from them. even the 5-year-old were crying at this point. an employee put all the carefully-selected pumpkins in a jumble in a shiny little red wagon to take to the checkout lane, and the kids spent the next 10 minutes being told to sit still and not touch the pumpkins or any of the 200 other little red wagons lined up there, apparently as some sort of decoration only. only then did they get their donuts and juice, and then we got herded to the parking lot to try to sort out the pumpkins and drag their butts back home.

okay, whoever decided to take my $6 per kid for that crap needs to be hung by the ankles naked and pelted with rotten apples until they’re really. fucking. sorry.