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Thanks! Now I'm updated, and will dutifully avoid that thread and such topics. :)
EDIT: But not avoid my clothes! ... much! *gets re-dressed*
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NobodysHome’s Life of a Chaperone, Part III: The Thursday Morning Drive
One of my favorite things about chaperoning is the inevitable first interaction with the teen who's going to be stuck sitting with you for hours on end. It's always the same.
"Hi, I'm NobodysHome!"
"... <sulky teen pout>".
.
Within the hour, we're talking like old friends, and the teen is telling his/her friends how "cool" I am. Very gratifying, especially as I do my best to be the epitome of "uncool" just to irritate people.
Anyway, let the story continue:
Thursday, April 6, 2:00 am - 8:30 am
When I was younger, my body was absolutely astonishing: I could decide the exact moment I wanted to wake up, and I'd wake up within 10 minutes of that time. Now that I'm older, I tend to wake up about 30 minutes early. So I was pretty pleased when I woke up, checked the clock, and it was 1:55 am. Nice job, body! I'd made coffee the night before, so I had a big mug of coffee and a yogurt (yeah, not a great taste combination, but a great way to get food in my stomach without upsetting it), woke up Impus Major, took my shower, and we were ready. We got to the high school around 2:30 am, and there were already a couple of kids (and one other chaperone) there.
For me, this year's loading process was a breeze, simply because I wasn't involved. The other chaperones scrambled to get the other 100 kids on the buses, check their luggage, verify they had their choir shirts, etc., etc., etc. I stood in the choir room and answered questions and checked in all my boys. And that was my big worry #1: Not only was I the satellite driver, but instead of last year's 2 rooms and 10 boys, this year I had 4 rooms and 18 boys. It helped that I knew quite a few of them from the previous year, but still, monitoring and checking in 18 boys three times a day seemed like quite a daunting task. Once all the other chaperones had taken over loading the bus and checking on all of the bus kids, and all my boys had checked in with me or another chaperone, I was tracked down by the girls I'd be driving down. I'd been told I'd be driving 5 freshman girls plus a senior boy I knew who has the most wonderfully cynical and sarcastic nature. I'd met him while chaperoning the winter madrigal concert, as he dutifully went into the crowd, cheerfully sold spice rub to raise cash, then came back to me and bitterly complained about what a sham the entire spice rub market was. By the end of the night, I was in stitches. I was really looking forward to listening to him tirade bitterly about the unfairness of the world for 5 hours straight.
Unfortunately, there had been a change in plans, and I'd be driving 6 freshman girls. So much for a deeply cynical drive! The sleepy, shy girls barely said, "Hi!" to me as they piled into the van, and we encountered our first hiccup: Apparently in modern minivans, there's a lever you pull to move the middle seat forward so you can get into the far back seat. I hadn't seen it before, but several of the girls had, and the lever on one side of the van was jammed. So much for a smooth loading process! They piled into the other side, got everyone arranged, and we decided to wait for the bus to pull out so I could follow it for a while.
So, in a brief little tirade, I understand that parents can be very concerned to the point of overprotectiveness. They come up with weird fear-based scenarios that they imagine are sure to happen, no matter how unlikely. So, during the "new parents" meeting with the chaperones, one of the parents was utterly horrified to learn that her girl would be in my van. Her reasoning was just amazing: It was physically impossible for a single untrained driver to make it to L.A. Even after I reassured her that not only had I done the trip before, but I do four round trips a year, she just didn't believe me. NO ONE could possibly drive for 7 hours without another adult in the car! It was really one of the most bizarre parental objections I've ever heard. So Ms. S reassured her that we were only going to Bakersfield, a 4-hour drive instead of a 7-hour one, and I would stop every 90 minutes. And, as I am Lawful and I take my duties as a chaperone very seriously, I was going to dutifully stop every 90 minutes and make sure the girls noted the stop. The girls, particularly the one whose mother had made the request, were nonplussed, but they understood that I was just doing my job.
At 3:30 am came and went and the other satellite car headed down (I don't know whether it was because CK was a new chaperone, or there were other reasons, but I was the "official" satellite and she was just driving down on her own). After a couple more minutes, I decided to follow suit, and we were off.
The drive down was utterly amazing. The person who had chosen to sit in the front seat was a self-described "fluid transgender" named 'Joey', choosing his or her gender based on their particular mood. After talking to me for a couple of hours, Joey decided that I should refer to him as a "he" for the trip, so I stubbornly persisted in doing so, even after he decided to take a determinedly feminine turn and started wearing a pink miniskirt, bralet, and nice pink sweater top, along with a bit of make-up. Who am I to decide what to call someone else? We had 3 transgenders on the trip, all 3 in my groups (apparently my not particularly caring one way or the other what gender someone wants to be identified with is a big plus), and all 3 preferring to be referred to as "he". Unfortunately, two of them have names as fluid as Joey's gender, so one of the ones I'd chaperoned the previous year had changed names, causing me all sorts of fits. Joey himself had 3 different names, but he'd asked me to call him Joey for the entire trip. I really appreciated his forthrightness and willingness to work with me. "You can call me 'Joey' and refer to me as 'he' for the whole trip, and that works for me." Makes life really easy.
So Joey talked at me. For 4 solid hours. He started off with a subject near and dear to my heart: The school system. He had a fascinating view as to why education in this country is broken: As children, our brains are hardwired to emulate those around us, mimicking them as we learn how to behave in society. Unfortunately, the school system does not understand this and puts 40 3-year-olds in a room with a single adult. The 40 3-year-olds learn to emulate other 3-year-olds rather than the adult. As we move through the school system, the feedback loop perpetuates itself, leading to the mass of immature selfishness that is the general U.S. population-at-large.
A fair theory, but I love to challenge people who do nothing but complain, so I asked Joey what he'd do differently. And he had an answer: Every parent is responsible for home schooling his or her offspring. It is such a brilliant, optimistic, unrealistic, "only a 15-year-old could believe that this might possibly work" idea that I loved it immediately. I did tell Joey I was absolutely certain that it could not possibly work, but I appreciated that he not only had a complaint, but had a proposed solution. From there, we moved on to transgenderism and sexuality, and it was an amazingly enlightening conversation. I had, up until that conversation, somehow linked gender identification with sexuality. Not that a transgender couldn't be gay, or bisexual, or whatnot, but, because I wasn't attracted to girls until I was 12 or 13, I couldn't imagine someone identifying themselves as transgender before that point. Joey pointed out that I knew that I was a boy long before I knew that I liked girls, so transgenderism is naturally going to arise before sexual orientation.
So there's the fluid spectrum of sexual identification (am I a boy, a girl, both, neither, or somewhere in the middle of all of those?) and sexual orientation (do I like boys, girls, both, neither, or somewhere in the middle of all of those?), and not only are they separate spectrums (which I already knew), but they arise at different times (which was my big revelation during the drive).
And on it went. Joey talked at me, I listened, I asked pointed questions, Joey thought about them, answered intelligently, and the four hours passed miraculously quickly. About 95 minutes in I stopped for gas. Another $47? What kind of gas mileage was this thing getting, anyway? After another couple of hours we were taking the Bakersfield turn-off so I broke out food for the girls and pulled over for a moment to set up my iPad with Google Maps so we could find the place we were going. Yes, I was hitting my 90-minute breaks pretty well, and I was teasing the girl whose mother it was (let's call her Pearl), a bilingual blonde with an irrepressable attitude whom I liked very much, and she took it in stride and gave me grief right back. The girls were warming to me. Those that were awake, at least.
In spite of Joey's insistence that he was a terrible navigator, he more than made up for Google Map's shortcomings ("Turn right. RIGHT NOW! I don't care that you're in the left lane of a 4-lane thoroughfare and I gave you no warning! What's that? Why did you miss your turn?"). We were supposed to be at the school at 8:30 am, and my girls (and Joey) arrived safely there at 8:22 am.
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NobodysHome’s Life of a Chaperone, Part III: The Thursday Morning Drive
One of my favorite things about chaperoning is the inevitable first interaction with the teen who's going to be stuck sitting with you for hours on end. It's always the same.
"Hi, I'm NobodysHome!"
"... <sulky teen pout>".
.
Within the hour, we're talking like old friends, and the teen is telling his/her friends how "cool" I am. Very gratifying, especially as I do my best to be the epitome of "uncool" just to irritate people.Anyway, let the story continue:
** spoiler omitted **...
pics or it didn't fail to navigate you to where you were supposed to be!
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Pea Bear's journey into her teenage years begins!
She has her first yearly checkup by herself.
It helps not having any vaccines scheduled. :-)
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Hopefully I wasn't away for too long. Life's been hectic with school and other such stuff!
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I thought GOAT stood for Greatest Of All Time.
I still can't believe the GOAT acronym, and it's been years since I stumbled upon it. The circumstances were strange enough, and I've only ever heard the acronym applied to one athlete, that some deep lizard part of my brain is still like BWUH?
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Who knew a tentacle squirting staff could be so much fun!
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Who knew a tentacle squirting staff could be so much fun!
Oho. He's growing up.
I think it's time for The Talk.
You see, Captain, when a giant God-Dragon and a Nord love one another very very much...
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Who knew a tentacle squirting staff could be so much fun!
0_o
What..do I have to do to get this Staff of Freeholdiness?
(Note- phone attempted to autocorrect that to staff of creepiness. Stupid phone.)
and today I feel pretty great/not crippled!
Weirdly, this has, kind of suddenly, just... stopped being true.
One twenty-minute walk followed by a ten-minute walk separated by four hours has left my legs feeling wrekt/near-cramping.
Go figure.
>> ... five hours and twenty minutes later I notice I haven't posted... <<
... aaaaaaaaaaand now it's worse. But TKD was pretty sweet, anyway!
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Holy s$@*! Who f*%~ing swore!
...D'oh!
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~shakes my head~ You ought to be f$&&ing ashamed of yourself, Captain Yesterday!
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Won't somebody think of the f@*+ing children!!!!
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*sigh* There goes the Cap'n, lookin' to get disciplined by purple-haired androids again.
Y'know, there are web sites for that, m'lord Captain...
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You say that like it's a regular thing.
I hardly ever get my f&#%ing posts removed.
I can't help my contrary rebellious nature. :-)
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Just did the expenses, and the minivan cost us $188.05 in gas for the trip. Compared to our usual $75 and the fact that the Prius can hold 5 as compared to the van's 7, it doesn't seem worth it... except we didn't have to find the extra driver it would require to take 2 Priii. (What the heck is the plural of "Prius", anyway? I think it's pronounced "Pree-eye", but heck if I know how to spell it.
Ah, well, not my decision. I've got another van scheduled for the Great America trip at the end of the month, and Ms. S will tell me whether or not to dump it.
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Ah, Autocorrect you naughty mistress:
NobodysHome: Impus Minor, everyone just left the theater. They won't be there for a while.
NH: Expect them around 4:45 pm.
Impus Minor: I'm already near the house.
NH: OK. If nobody is home just hang out for a bit, They're Boeing's.
IM: Uh oh.
IM: It's starting to rain.
IM: I'm dying in the street.
IM: WTF?
IM: WHY AUTO CORRECT?
IM: STILL
IM: NOT DYING
I'm honestly confused as to how we all manage to text with that kind of incomprehensible error rate.
My all-time favorite was Impus Minor's infamous, "Help! Mom! I'm in love!"
His phone had replaced "pain" with "love".
As Pat Benatar said so appropriately, "Love and pain become one and the same in the eyes of a wounded child."
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You should see the terrible things i've done to my autocorrect.
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Well, that's pretty rare for this thread.
Not the profanity...the moderation...
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Who knew a tentacle squirting staff could be so much fun!0_o
What..do I have to do to get this Staff of Freeholdiness?
(Note- phone attempted to autocorrect that to staff of creepiness. Stupid phone.)
...
Coincidence?
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Well, that's pretty rare for this thread.
Not the profanity...the moderation...
They can see us?
Wait...
They can moderate us?!
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You should see the terrible things i've done to my autocorrect.
Turned it off?
I did that with my tablet suggestions.
I don't write much on the tablet though.
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Even better! I add to it by forcing it to remember ridiculous s@#! like supercali... something or other.
The point is, it's been damaged psychologically.
I blame Brad Pitt.
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Therumpsatonthestumpandmadeagreatgrump.
See, now it'll remember that. :-)
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I was playing Borderlands 2 when one of the bad guys called me a midget lover. I replied that that was small of him.
I then told my wife that and she said that there was nothing in the marrage vows that said that she had to listen to my bad sense of humor. In better and in worse, ect., but nothing about having to put up with bad jokes. ~thinks~ Maybe I should have worded the vows better.
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I was showing NobodysWife the responses to poor, beleaguered Sharaya (who lured her here, anyway? This place is dangerous for mods!), when I saw some kind soul had favorited her post.
And yes, it was TL!
One of these days I'm doing to figure out a way to post something he doesn't like, gosh darn it!
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We love the mods! Usually they drop by and talk about tea or cats when things are slow.
Actual moderation rarely happens. :-)
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And back on the subject of my phone, I already mentioned that its autocorrect replaces "plate" with "slave".
On the trip I learned that it replaces "keys" with "Jews".
WTF, phone? Just, seriously, OMG what is wrong with the people who programmed my phone?
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Many more f*@%ing mice will die this night.
(For the record, two died last night)
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I've been petitioning to allow us to favorite with aliases for years now.
And by petitioning, I mean, I occasionally say that would be a good idea.
For the record, if Mikaze's Erotic romance letter to Distant Worlds didn't break the favoriting button thingy, nothing will.
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My autocorrect changes my yahoo mail login for «lesbic». WTF?
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I got a second roommate! He's pretty chill thankfully, and we watch anime and movies together when I'm not busy.
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So, now we have profanity on this thread. Well, that's just great. I leave for work, and what happens? Andrew Dice Clay stops by for a visit. :P
~thinks for a minute and then shakes my head~ Nah! Even I have limits. Besides, anyone can search YouTube for his videos, so there is no use linking them here. No {insert string of curse words) use at all.
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So, I started listening to the podcast "Crimetown." And let me tell you, hearing D&D explained by an ex-mobster who, to my European ears, sounds like he could've been part of the Sopranos's cast is the best D&D explanation ever.
(He's a DM.)
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I've...been moderated?
HERE?
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Hey, Freehold. Cheer up! I've got your Y-Wing and I'll be mailing it today.
Y would you do that? Y?
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Took me 10 seconds to understand it.
Shame.
I've...been moderated?
HERE?
Maybe this will help? Also? Or maybe this? Part two?
<snip> TL!
One of these days I'm doing to figure out a way to post something he doesn't like, gosh darn it!
Oh, it definitely happens. I don't know for sure who does or doesn't, and a lack of a favorite isn't always a guarantee that I didn't try, as sometimes I overwhelm the computer or my connection or something, as it just leaves the gray "Adding favorite" text for a loooooooong time and then just never does, or I navigate away before it sticks or something.
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If it's any consolation, NH, I do know a secret technique for breaking Tac's fave-chains . . . . }:>
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Don't make me do it, though, Captain CarpalTunnel!
lol
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If I don't get faved by TL I feel like I'm doing something wrong... ;-D