This one time, in band camp three friends and I took a big group of middle school kids to an Academic Competition about fifty miles from the school. This was no mean feat; it meant arm-wrestling the coaches for a bus, and juggling schedules with the athletic practices for the kids. I won.
On the way home from the meet (where we blew all the other middle schools out of the water, by the way) we stopped at a Dairy Queen. No self-respecting kid would want to sit with the chaperones, so we four adults, and I use that term loosely, had a whole table to ourselves.
After about fifteen minutes of conversation, which included detailed descriptions of everybody’s wedding night, our opinions of educational policy and a lot of the administrators we had been afflicted with over the years, people we all knew, the school, some of the schools we had beaten, kids in general, and world peace, we noticed that the students had all moved away from our table, as far away as they could get, in fact, and still be inside the restaurant.
“Good,” we thought. “We don’t have to whisper.”
But we had never been whispering, we realized in horror. Then we laughed some more, and went on talking.
We talked until the manager of the Dairy Queen asked us to leave. We were disturbing the other customers.
We apologized, and told him we would round up the kids and get them out.
“No, no,” he assured us. “It wasn’t the kids. Your kids are fine.”
It was us. The four adult chaperones.
Were we embarassed? Well, yeah, some.
Did we care? Not much, no.
Was it worth it? Heck yeah.
It wasn’t like we lived in that town. (Some attitude, huh).
Even the kids had moved away from us. Hahahahahahahaha
A table of four so-called adults. Yup, yup, yup.
One professor, one guardian ad litem, one General Motors executive, and one lieutenant governor of the state.
We’re a wild bunch, we are.