The Joys of Being a Chaperone

A bit of a change of pace this week. Back when my son was in high school in the school band, I got roped into becoming co-president of the band boosters. Among other things this meant that I would be a chaperone on the trip to the Starlight Parade in Portland. Yay. I was savvy enough to take notes about what happened that day, and I thought I would share them with you, lo these many years later:

I arrive bright and early along with Mr. M.  (the band teacher) and the other chaperones. We start organizing things and loading equipment on the equipment van. I begin going over my checklist of things to make sure we brought Band-Aids, scissors, duct tape, etc. I ask Mr. M. about some of the things on my checklist. He says we need extra reeds and goes upstairs to get them. Some students still don’t have permission slips, so we have to watch out for them and grab their parents before they leave.

It is now 11:00 (our scheduled departure time) and students “A” and “B” have not yet arrived. Finally student “A” arrives. Student “B” is called on the phone. “…uh…okay, I’ll be there,” is her reply. She arrives.  I take attendance on bus 2 and we depart. Late.

Another chaperone on my bus informs me that one of our bus drivers was overheard to say that he learned to drive a bus in the penitentiary. Great. As the bus climbs one of the hills, we notice it is getting hot. Some of the kids ask the driver if he can turn up the air conditioner. “I have to turn it off going up hills otherwise the engine overheats. Great. At the top of Cline hill we see bus #1 turn off to Ellmaker State Park. An unscheduled stop.

Something is wrong. Our bus stops at the turn off for the park… and the engine dies. Our driver cranks and cranks and cranks and finally it starts again. We pull into the park to join the other bus. I find out what the ‘something’ was that was wrong. Mr. M discovered student “A” was high on acid. The buses will proceed. My other chaperone will stay in the park with student “A” and wait for someone to come from Newport and pick them up. This leaves me with only one other chaperone on my bus but that is okay.

We drive to Portland and arrive at the Lloyd center (late). Mr. M. decides to push back our reboarding time to 3:30 to give the students a little more time at the Lloyd center. After everyone is inside I learn that the buses have moved to a new location and that is where we are to meet to reboard. The people on bus 1 already know this. The people on my bus don’t. At 3:20 I start standing by the door to point all my people the right way. At 3:35 I go out to the bus to take attendance. At 3:45 I am still 7 kids short. They finally arrive at 3:50 and we depart. We arrive at the festival center (late). Everyone has an hour and a half to have fun and eat. The festival center is HOT. I try to keep to what little bit of shade there is. I drank all my water on the bus, but I needed more. A small bottle of water costs $2. I go through 2 of them.

As we wait to reboard the buses, some of the students decide this would be a good time to walk through the fountain. One has bought or won a large stuffed lion. He decides to walk through the fountain with his lion. The bus driver won’t let the soaked kids (and lion) on the bus. He hands them a roll of paper towels.  Everyone is finally dryish and ready, we depart the festival center at 6:00. One student on the bus in front of me asks, “does anyone have some scissors?”

“I do,” I reply pulling them out of my backpack.

Later, “Does anyone have a needle and thread?”

“I do,” I say. Giving her some. I was very proud of my checklist.

We arrive at our unloading spot at 6:20. The students get off and start unloading instruments. One student turns and trips over a sousaphone. It falls apart. The sousaphone pieces leave my view but I am soon told it has been repaired with duct tape. The parade official is trying to get us to move our bus, as other buses need to unload here. I see a uniform jacket in one of the windows of the bus. I run on and grab it off before the bus leaves. As the buses disappear out of site, student “C” walks up fully loaded from Burger King. “Where’s the buses?” he asks. We tell him they are gone. “Did anyone get my jacket?” I show him the one I found, but it is not his. “… and did anyone get my trumpet?” he asks.

Mr. M. has a cow. “How can you be so airheaded!”  He tells student “C” go chase the bus. He hovers a moment, uncertain what to do with his food. “Put that stuff down and go find the bus!” Mr. M. says. The last we see of student “C”, he is running down Davis Street.

Mr. M. has rearranged about 7 students in the formation to make up for the hole left by student “A”. I do feel sorry for the students having to put on their wool uniforms in this heat. I wander around the mass of students trying to find the owner of this jacket. I find a student without a jacket and ask him if this is his. “Uh” he says as he puts it on. He appears not the least concerned about his jacket. He asks, “Did you get the gloves too?”

We discover we need extra reeds. “That’s okay,” I say. “Mr. M. got some before we left.”

“No, he says. “I went up to get them but I got distracted.”

I notice student “D” is lying on the ground. Sick. We help her to the van, but she doesn’t look too good. Mr. M starts rearranging the formation again. Student “C” returns successful, jacket in hand and very sweaty. The band forms up for inspection. Our band looks very impressive. The marines take a long time inspecting the band. A long time to stand at attention… in 80+ degrees… in wool uniforms. The marines leave and student “E” gets sick from the heat. I take her over to the van to get water. I had asked Jan to bring water for the kids at this point, she gets it out and we start distributing water and apple slices to all the kids. Now student “F” gets sick. Mr. M has just found out about students “E” and “F” and starts reworking the formation yet again.

Now that the inspection is over, duct tape is put back on some of the sousaphones to hold them together. A bass clarinetist loses the pad off his “most important key”. Mr. M. asks me to take it and the student and go find someone named Lindsey who will be in the “One More Time Around Band” He might be able to fix it. Right. The “One More Time Around Band” has 600 members. We find the OMTAB. We wade through the band asking, “does anyone know Lindsey?” Finally we find him. He takes us back to his repair kit. The torch he needs to repair the instrument is missing. He puts the tab on with duct tape (I could have done that much).

We make it back to our band. There is another instrument to be repaired. Duct tape it is. Students “E” and ”F” are now feeling like they might be able to march. Mr. M. changes the formation one more time. One student asks me if I will carry his inhaler for him during the parade. “I’ll wave my hand if I need it,” he says. I feel a little uneasy about this and make sure I know where he is in the formation. He is about 9 rows in front of me. I just hope I will be able to see him if he signals.

Finally the parade starts. The other chaperones and I are “outwalkers”. We walk behind the band and pick up anything that falls.  The band sounds great. I can only catch an occasional glimpse of my inhaler student. Only a few mishaps occur along the route. One drunk decides to walk backward down the street so he can talk to somebody in front of him. He bumps into a few band members. Seems perturbed. Keeps walking backward, bumps into a few more, then a few more. You would think at some point he would turn around to face the parade that is running over him but no. Like Homer Simpson would do, he just keeps walking backward “doh!”  Amber (another outwalker) finds a trumpet slide on the ground. She can’t find a trumpet player who is missing one.  So it must have been from some other band. Near the end of the parade one of the sousaphone’s mouthpiece falls off. Amber grabs it and returns it to the rightful owner. We finish the parade and everyone cheers.

We find the buses. Dress, load instruments, uniforms, hats. Never mind about sorting, just throw them on the van. Sometime after 11 we depart. Sometime after 11:02 we start noticing a smell throughout the bus. It is unmistakably from the bathroom which has no air conditioning and probably no chemicals in the chemical toilet and has been brewing in the heat for the last 12 hours. The smell is not any better in the front of the bus.

12:15 We stop at an AMPM in Newberg. Besides the normal items purchased by high school kids (pop, candy, junk food) several people buy air freshener.  We reload the busses and head home, arriving at 2:30 AM. Time for bed.

So there you have it. Nobody died. So I guess I did my job. The moral of the story is, if you ever find yourself a chaperone on a high school band bus, take notes. You may find them more amusing after the fact than during the event (and bring duct tape, lots of duct tape).

(My science fiction novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in October).