Band Trip Epilogue
This is why I am not fit to chaperone children or be put in any position of responsibility: I am a dweeb.
We took the band to the mall for lunch and, since I was starving of hunger, I propelled myself off the bus and led the charge into the mall. We strode fearlessly into Macy's, with my son proclaiming he felt like a viking on the Capital One Commercial, only with no helmet. Yes, vikings in blue bow ties and cummerbunds, that was us!
The kids all assured me they knew where we were going, so we cruised through the jewelry department, past the make-up counter and into fine china, leaving stunned employees reeling in our wake. We plowed through the crystal and into housewares, an unstoppable, bow-tied force of nature. Through the furniture department we marched, only to come to a dead halt. We were at the back door and were facing the parking deck, not the food court.
Ooops.
Ok, well I never said I knew where the damn food court was. I never go to this particular mall! The kids wheeled around and screamed "TO THE ESCALATOR"!!!! They took off like stampeding cattle, leaving ME reeling in their wake. I felt like a cartoon character as they raced around either side of me, with my hair standing on end and a dazed expression on my face: Which way did they go George???
I followed along behind as quickly as I could, but they were already on the escalator, having stampeded through the china department AGAIN. Fortunately, nothing was broken and we all made it to the food court alive. They were not serving alcoholic beverages this early, so I ended up eating a healthy sandwich instead. Damn, I could have used a drink for the bus ride.
My only other observation is that teenagers smell really bad! After the concert, I got trapped in the middle of the sweaty, stinky mass of adolescents as they fought their way to the bus. Imagine taking a sweaty athletic sock and burying it in a vat of cabbage underground for a month and you might get a notion of what it smelled like. Renee, the personal Ionic Breeze cannot be developed soon enough!!
The rest of the day was uneventful, and the kids did pretty well on stage, although not as well as they had hoped. And I did not manage to embarrass my son a single time, since I was unable to locate the orange shirt. Dammit!! Oh well, there's always next time!!
