Third Grade Field Trip...Fractions, Bones, and um, Squirrels

I went to Asheville today for a third grade field trip to a science center.  I ate lunch with another boy kid since my own boy kid decided that sitting up on the rock wall was way better than down low where I was sitting in the courtyard.


The boy kid I ate beside showed me every single item he took out of his lunchbox including a nice note from his mother telling him she hoped he had a good time.  And y'all?  He was really proud of that note.  Somehow, I get the feeling that my putting a mushy note in one of my boys' lunches would not be as well received.  Dracen would possibly blow it off but Devin would view that as embarrassing torment in the third degree and would still be bringing it up years later.  


Just like that time I tried to catch up with him in the hallway after a field trip and he practically ran from me and pretended he had severe hearing loss.  He wanted nothing more than for me to disappear. Or for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. 


When I arrived at the science center, which is in downtown Asheville, the buses were already unloading in front of the building and I had no inkling whatsoever as to where I was supposed to park.  So I rode around and around and around the block three times, hitting every single stoplight on red in the process before finally finding a parking deck.  


By the time I got in the place I must have looked like Dorothy arriving in the land of Oz because I had three different people ask if they could help me. With some direction, I finally found Dracen's class in the third floor classroom talking about (of all things) fractions.  Fractions and I do not have a very civil relationship and this goes way back to my own school days.  


The man was teaching them about odds...the odds of guessing right by flipping a coin, rolling a die, rolling two dice and yada, yada, yada... Did y'all know that your best odds of guessing correctly when two dice are rolled is with the number seven?  Well, it is.  I suppose that's maybe how the number seven earned the "Lucky Number 7" title, huh?  Should I have known this?  I feel like I should have known this. Did you know?  Don't answer that.  


Unless the answer is no.  


Anyway, moving on.  Next up was bones.  The girl...okay, woman ( I have a bad habit of calling anyone more than five years younger than me "girl") was clearly not about to take any crap off of any 8 year olds up in her bones class.  She was on a tight time schedule and therefore did not want to hear about anybody's broken bone stories and sure as heck didn't want any squirrely behavior. Yes, she called them squirrels about five different times and I thought she was going to strangle the boy who kept saying, "I'm not a squirrel!  I'm a human being!  I'm not a squirrel!  I'm a human being!" 


Hey, I was on her side.  


Charlie once described Dracen like a little squirrel in the middle of the road.  Have you ever come up on a squirrel in the road and slowed down (please tell me you slow down for critters in the road or I don't want to know you) and the crazy spastic, little thing can't figure out if he wants to go to the left or the right so he goes back and forth and back and forth until he finally dashes up a tree?  Well, if you've witnessed that, then you have an idea what my Dracen is like the majority of the time.  

But I digress.  


Back to the bones class... Clearly, these kids had been studying their bone facts because I was impressed with what they knew about bones.  They were naming different types of joints...gliding joints, hinged joints, ball and socket joints... The little brains threw out many bone terms and Ms. Squirrel Teacher seemed quite happy with their knowledge.  


"So", she said, "Is there anything else you can think of that goes along with bones?"  And I just about fell off my chair when one of the boys that had been trying his best to tell his personal stories throughout the presentation shouted out, "Meat!".  And even she had to laugh at that one.  It was, after all, time for lunch...


Where I sat and conversed with the boy kid who didn't belong to me while eating my meat turkey sandwich and yelling across the courtyard at my own boy kid who was busy demonstrating his climbing and balancing skills on the edge of a rock wall.


You have to keep your eye on those unpredictable squirrels. You never know when they might fall and, I don't know...break a bone.