The Happy Group Travels by Bus to The Home Depot

I signed up to be a chaperon for the kindergarten field trip to Home Depot last Thursday. I was assigned five children to watch over, including my own Little Gary. Auna, one of the two little girls in my bunch, named our group The Happy Group, and we were indeed happy, for we were to ride actual school buses! Oh, the joy! Oh, the anticipation! With all those smiling, excited little faces around me, I remembered how much I had loved kindergarten.

As our group walked in line to the buses, Little Gary held my hand. He kissed it repeatedly as we trotted along. "This is my mom," he proudly told the other children. "I sure do love her!" A couple seconds later he said, "Do you guys like my mom?" Auna, who is a polite and lovely child, said, "Yes, I like your mom." Little Gary said, "Don't you love her voice?" They were confused by that but were saved from answering because we had just emerged, on a glorious spring day, at the buses.

I rode school buses every single day when I first started school -- one hour to school, one hour home, since we lived quite a ways outside of the small town where my elementary school was located, and we (my brother and I) were the first to be picked up and the last to be dropped off. The best part of the inward trip was when we went down a long hill, at the bottom of which was a cow grate set slightly above the level of the street. You'd start bouncing on your seat about midway down the hill, and if you timed it just right, you'd be hitting the seat at the exact moment the bus bumped over the grate. For a stomach-churning split second, you were suspended in the air before coming down hard enough to nearly snap your spine.

Unfortunately, our bus ride to Home Depot didn't include any cow grates, but the kids loved it anyway. "So this is what it looks like on the inside of a bus!" they kept exclaiming to each other. Their little hands clutched the top of the seats so they could lift themselves up high enough to see out the front. They chattered amongst themselves about the strange window opening mechanism. Meanwhile, my knees were making a pretty serious dent into the back of the seat in front of me. Had there been any cow grates, I would have broken my neck on the ceiling before I had a chance to tell the kids to settle down back there. It's been a long, long time since I rode a school bus.

At Home Depot, a petite woman with a swingy brunette bob talked to the kids about seeds and then let all one bazillion kindergartners and their adults loose to make plant holders. The kids immediately handed me their coats and headed for the line to get their personalized orange aprons (their names written hastily in black permanent marker at the top) and a packet of building components. Once we'd found a big enough spot at the piles of plywood that served as worktables, I got to work.

Because the reality was that I made five plant holders that day, and then, when they announced that there were plenty of bird feeder project packets available, I ended up making five bird feeders, as well. Sure, the kids helped tap a nail in or spread glue messily on the wrong parts while I frantically rushed between them and stole hammers and screwdrivers from unsuspecting adults at other tables, but the only reason my kids all walked out of there with finished projects and the correct coat was because I became Superwoman for an hour. I'm sure, however, that Superwoman probably doesn't sweat heavily at the hairline and armpits or continuously drop her sunglasses when she leans over to pick up infinitely small and hard-to-spot nails from the floor even when she's in the throes of an overly ambitious wood project that includes kindergartners.

Eventually, the projects were finished and bagged, and I had convinced The Happy Group to finally just stick the plant saucer bottoms into their orange apron pockets, since they were going to keep coming off the plant pots and I was a little weary of chasing them through the aisles as they merrily rolled away (the plant saucer bottoms, not the kids). Little Gary was tired and thirsty and hot, so he fussed petulantly and clung to my knee. The rest of the group, who were withholding their petulance because I was not their actual mother, sat in exhausted heaps on the cement floor. I was never so glad to be told to march outside and meet a school bus. We found our seats again for the seven minute ride back to school and remained quiet even through the thrill of viewing the world from the inside of a school bus. I was even grateful to be handed a Rice Krispy treat and a Capri Sun. I miss kindergarten.