Field trips are great fun as a kid and I often see the excitement in our 12 year old when she has one. It might be a trip to the same museum we have gone before, but for kids it is a major event that they start planning well ahead. Today as I took my morning commute a whole class of second graders got in with their teachers and it was a whole festival throughout the trip all the way to embarcadero where they were getting down to visit the San Francisco Aquarium.
The moment they got in they were running to find seats and the teacher said “Don’t take the seats, these people are traveling to work and it is best they use it”.
Then one kid looks at a guy in a seat sleeping with his eyes closed “But why is that guy sleeping? Its morning” He said.
The teacher explained that they do a lot of work and feel tired and so they sleep. The kid did not ask why he was sleeping on his way to work and not while he was returning in the evening. Well kids don’t need a lot of details to be convinced and move on with their next question.
A few way in one of the kid shouted “Looks like my house”.
“No you dummy…” says another “It is not near the rail tracks”.
Then all way through they would point at everything like a soccer field, the coliseum at Oakland, buildings, trucks, streetlights and much more and would all cry with excitement and energy. As we got into a tunnel all of them closed their ears with their hands, while one guy shouts out
“This is not as tough as the plane” And takes his hands from his ears and stands an inch taller than before.
I looked at the other passengers as some started talking with the teacher and asking where they were going, and one guy started teaching the kids how to stand holding the handle and be safe and not fall. A kid pointed to a guy on his computer and said “I love computers”. The teacher said then you should be a computer scientist and for that you got to do a lot of learning for that and also be very good at Math. I looked at the guy’s face and he seemed happy as if he was waiting for such a recognition for a long time, finally a sense of achievement comes to him.
Finally embarcadero station reached and all of the kids and teachers and a few passengers got down and left a whole vacuum in the train until then one guy probably in his forties says “I wish I could join them”
To which a few more joined “Yay Yay” “It would be a lot fun, I miss my school” added another guy on the seat.
I looked around and saw a whole compartment of happy smiling people. The compartment that was full of potentially stressed, rushing, overworked and sleepy souls was now filled with a bunch of happy folks who all seemed to have connected with their own childhood. What a change kids can make in us, they call out and play with the kid in us.
My Two Cents
Connect with the Kid in You!
Categories: Life, Life and Happiness, My Two Cents, Style40
Vinod Narayan 