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Saturday, January 28, 2012

A funny little conversation

Ian's first grade class took a field trip to the Udvar Hazy Museum a few weeks ago.  I get a bit nervous knowing Ian (at the tender age of 6), is off on his own doing a field trip.  The teacher/parent to kid ratio is not in my favor.  I could easily see a situation where the group moves on ahead and Ian is still contemplating the speed of light vs the speed of a jet plane and gets left behind.  If I could put a sticker on Ian's back with the following:  "If  lost, please call my mom at xxx-xxx-xxxx", I would.  But I have feeling the chances of Ian getting made fun of is quite high and I use all my will power from doing so.  So, I do the next best thing and drill my cell phone number into Ian's memory.  Ian long ago learned the home phone number, but in all likelihood, it's the cell phone that will have a better chance of reaching us.  Unfortunately, my cell phone has a 202 area code, so this means it is another 3 digits he has to learn.  Every time I randomly asked Ian to tell me my phone number, he'd get it all confused and start mixing in the home phone's digits.  Oy!  Just in the nick of time, Ian managed to say my cell phone number correctly 3 times in a row.  I could breathe a sigh of relief and focus on my next concern.  His Winter coat.

Again, I easily pictured another scenario where there are over 100 kids (all four 1st grade classes went on this field trip) who take off their winter jackets and put them in a big pile upon entering the museum.  How in world Ian's coat make it back to Ian?  It would be so easy for another kid to accidentally pick it up. Almost all these blue boys coats look alike. And who knows what this mysterious kid would do to the coat once he realizes it isn't his?

Very quietly, I took a sharpie and wrote Ian's name in it and our phone number on the little name-tag label they put in kid's clothes. I never told Ian I did this and figured that the coat now had a chance of coming back to its rightful owner if it got misplaced. 

At dinner, Ian was telling us about his day and all the cool things he saw at the museum.  Once I was able to start asking questions, we had the following conversation -

Me:  Ian, I am curious, what did you do with your coat at the museum?

Ian:  Plan A was for Mrs. S. to look around and find the kid that had the biggest backpack.  Evan won that game.  We were going to take the back pack and put our coats in it when we got to the museum.

Me:  Oh, that's cool.

Ian:  But we didn't do Plan A.  We did Plan B. 

Me:  What was Plan B?

Ian:  Plan B was to put our coats on our seat on the bus.  We had to sit in the same exact spot going back to school and this way we would know where our seat was.

Me:  Wasn't it cold getting off the bus and walking to the doors of the museum without your jacket on?

Ian:  Yes!!  We were shivering!!!  I wish we went with Plan C.

Me:  What was Plan C?

Ian:  Plan C should've been that you could wear your coat if you wanted, leave it on the bus if you didn't.  We took Evan's back pack anyway and never used it!  Mrs. S. just carried it around empty.  What a waste.

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