Before we get started, I want to thank you guys for your help yesterday. I’d forgotten some of those stories, and was laughing my ass clean-off. “Grandma can be quite arduous…” Hilarious. What a fantastic, fully-realized gang of kooks.
Yes, they’re the gift that keeps on giving. And they’ll be staying with us for a full week this summer. Have I mentioned that? Apparently it’s true. Nancy and the gang will be here for six nights in August. Six!
Stay tuned, and make sure you’re subscribed to the mailing list… Six nights might generate two or three secret updates. Heh.
Our oldest youngling is on his way to Washington DC as I type this. He and most of his class will be hitting every main tourist attraction in the city, in less than 48 hours. The itinerary is insane; I almost had to lie down after reading it.
I went to DC in sixth grade, with the school safety patrols. We, too, blitzed all the main monuments, the Smithsonian, Arlington Cemetery, etc. We saw a ton of stuff, and I can’t remember much about any of it.
Only three things from that trip, which happened in 1975, remain vivid in my mind. And none are related to the White House, or the Capitol Building.
The first: Stevie Wonder was staying at our hotel. He was in town to make an appearance at some sort of demonstration, which also featured Muhammad Ali, I believe, and eventually devolved into violence.
We were told that Stevie would be arriving at the hotel at a certain time, so we hung around the lobby, hoping to get a look at him. I mean, he was one of the biggest stars in the world at the time, and it was all very exciting.
So, we stood there like idiots, and a limousine finally pulled up. Several large bodyguard types got out, and one of them opened a door on the car. And the worst Stevie Wonder decoy in the world emerged…
The dude looked like Grady on Sanford and Son. He was wearing dark glasses, and pretending to be blind: stumbling around and whatnot. We were a group of sixth graders from West Virginia, and even we were rolling our eyes at this pathetic attempt.
After the poor man’s Stevie Wonder passed through, the hotel staff shooed us away, and we never got to see the real deal. Wotta rip-off.
Another vivid memory: A bunch of us bought keychains in a gift shop somewhere, with real, operational cap guns attached. They used red, plastic caps, which we also purchased. And these were a source of much amusement…
Inside our hotel room (a very fancy-pants place, I might add) we started shooting the guns into our pillows. And after every mini-explosion, there would be a yellowish brown spot left over on the pillowcase. And we thought this was the height of comedy.
By the time we were finished, all of the bedding looked tie-dyed, and we couldn’t stop laughing about it. And the concerning part? I’m still laughing, in 2010. That’s the part that should probably worry me a bit. But, of course, it doesn’t.
And finally, the most vivid memory of all…
Both mornings we were herded into a cafeteria somewhere, just completely filled with unknown kids, approximately our age. It was pandemonium, and incredibly noisy.
And I remember watching a large black woman standing in front of a tray of drinking glasses. They were packed tightly, shoulder to shoulder, and she was pouring orange juice into them, in one continuous motion.
She wasn’t pouring juice into each glass. Oh no. It was just being dumped all willy-nilly, across the entire tray at once. So when we were served our juice, some glasses were half full, and others only contained a couple of ounces. And, of course, the glasses were sticky as all hell.
I don’t remember much about the Lincoln Memorial or the Supreme Court, but I remember that orange juice scene like it happened yesterday.
The picture at the top of this update was taken on our DC trip in 1975. As far as I can tell, I do not appear in it. But it’s all distorted and psychedelic, for some reason. So who knows? I swiped it off an ex-classmate’s Facebook page.
Dig the crazy Gilligan hats we were forced to wear! It’s so they could keep track of us, of course, and I probably still have mine somewhere. I never throw anything away.
And now the obvious Question of the Day… Did you ever go on any overnight school-sanctioned trips as a kid? Did anything interesting happen? Use the comments link, to tell us all about it.
And I’m going to call it a day here, my friends. I hope everyone has a great weekend.
See you next time!
@Nathan, on May 7th, 2010 at 9:27 am Said:
nice! the Bunker Cam is of a tree in Willamsburg, Brooklyn! Quite a sight at McCarren Park….
That’s what I thought! I used to live over there, and that tree is um…distinctive. I love the added jewelry!
I guess I waited too long to see the Brooklyn tree Bunker Cam photo. Now there’s a woman playing an organ on a train? plane? and the passengers feel they must swivel their heads to watch her. The man in glasses appears to be irritated as if some whistledick was crinkling candy wrappers.
We only ever had one overnight trip that was mandatory for all able-bodied 7th graders and that was to some Hills-Have-Eyes campground where we all stayed for the weekend in cabins divided by gender and subdivided by clique. I landed in the Freaks and Geeks cabin and as was to be expected, we never suffered the indignities of a panty raid.
Anyway, I have three salient memories from the trip. One, apparently Mother Nature had it in for the class Pretty Boy, because he was not only attacked by insect hordes and poison ivy, but one night he awoke to find a large bat on his pillow regarding him with cool malevolence. By the end of the trip he had aged about five years. Yeah, Nature don’t like man-pretty.
Second, and this is really gross, the morbidly obese girl got her period in spectacular fashion one horrible afternoon in the Freaks and Geeks cabin. One minute she was standing there perfectly calm, the next she began screaming like she was being mauled by wolverines. I turned around for a second to see if anyone else was witnessing this when I heard a terrible splash. When I looked back it was like the prom scene from Carrie, no lie! That shit ain’t right!!
Third, on the last day before we loaded the bus to go home we were all fed hoagies. The bucktoothed kid in our class must have found them disagreeable, because soon after consumption he started puking. And puking. And puking. And let me tell you, seeing an exceedingly bucktoothed person puke is something to behold. It was like witnessing a partial dam break. Oy!
maybe the morbidly obese girl’s fat had created a giant fat blood levy and that was actually her 9th period but it’d all been held back until it turned her vagina into the elevator from the shining?
You know, the elevator scene from The Shining is much more accurate imagery, T-storm. Wish I’d thought of that. 🙂
good gawd, Gretchen – great descriptions. I felt like I was there. wish I had stayed at home.
I’m already twitchy about bats, to say the least, and that damn bat on a pillow gave a full-body shivery convulsion.
During one summer’s band camp, the beautiful red-headed girl in our cabin got sun poisoning. She woke up one morning to find her forehead swelled out about 1 1/2″. She was feverish and woozy. We couldn’t help but gawk then we were jealous because she got to go home.
In my sophomore year in high school (1982), we had a parent subsidized trip to Chicago from Des Moines. We knew right away it was going to be a gas when all the jocks showed up in Hawaiian shirts with orange juice, and we showed up with weed and vodka. Luckily they boarded one bus, and we boarded the other. A few highlights of the trip:
Me and the guys in my group took turns going into the bus bathroom and taking hits off the pipe. About 45 mins into the trip, the bus driver behind us radioed to our driver that heavy smoke was billowing from the bathroom window. Our science teacher/chaperon Richard Moore (Yes, his real name), came to the back of the bus and told us to wait until we got to the hotel. Very cool guy…
Once we got to the hotel, we ended up having six guys sitting in a circle with three pipes being passed around. After we were throughly stoned, we decided it would be fun to launch paper airplanes from our 14th story room. It overlooked the street and a park which was totally cool. The paper airplanes soon turned into flaming paper airplanes, then pieces of the phone book, then flaming pieces of the phone book. Some girl from the jock group saw us and squealed. What an assbag.
The next day before we went to the museums, art center, etc…one of the guys called us into his room and said…”You may worship me later” and pulled out enough shrooms for all of us. Needless to say the rest of the day was filled with…well…unusual moments.
Alice: I’ve detailed it here before, but I had the misfortune of waking up with a bat clambering all over a window mere inches from my pillow. That was the last time I ever slept nekkid.
8th Grade trip to DC. Ours was 5 days. We also got to go to Bush Gardens in VA. I’ll never forget the MEAN vice principal was one of our chaperon’s. On that trip he was totally cool. He was standing with about 6 of us guys outside of one of the Smithsonian’s and said, “I’m fucking tired of museums. Do you boys want to go to the FBI building?” We all about dropped rectal plates. That was the highlight of the trip. He was still an educator though. On the walk over to the Hoover building we saw a homeless guy jacking off on a street corner and he said “That’s what will happen to you boys if you get into drugs!”. The homeless guy heard and yelled to our VP to fuck off or something disrespectful. The VP said, “Come over here and say that to my face and I’ll knock that last tooth out of your mouth for ya, you dirt bag!”. I thought that was bad ass! One of the nights eight of us split a case (24) of beer that one of the kids had a homeless person buy for $32.00. I never thought we’d see any beer. I figured that bum would take the $32 and split. He proved me wrong, back in less than 10 minutes. One girl had to be flown home she was so homesick. My dad would have killed me! Everyone else had a blast.
Oh and when we went back to school the next week that Vice Principal was back to being as mean as a pit viper! And now a few of us knew he would back up his threats.
The Sr. class Cincinnati overnight trip in 1981. Good gawd! The Kroger Nuns, the NUNS !!!
No overnight school trips where I grew up. Most of ours were day trips to the tide pools, Sutter’s Fort, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, some local adobe huts where they found a Mammoth bone and tooth, the Winchester Mystery House, the San Francisco Exploratorium, and a few other places unmemorable. I don’t think the school district had enough cash for overnighters, and neither did the families (lots of military personnel lived in town). Besides, each time there was an incident involving children on a bus, the parents got a little paranoid and demanded a moratorium on trips (e.g. the Chowchilla kidnapping and a school bus that failed to negotiate a freeway exit and plunged 40 ft. over the side of the offramp.)
I did go to girls camp through church, though. Usually uneventful — campfires with ghost stories and s’mores, hiking, canoeing, crafts, snipe hunts, and silly teenage girl antics. I recall one year being woken in the middle of the night because we could hear a rattlesnake nearby. Everyone had to get up and move to another area in the dark. Not a big deal, except I had to hop and hobble 100 yards in my sleeping bag because my pants were somehow missing. (I had taken them off because they were too constricting. I was the immodest one, I suppose — but not immodest enough to walk around in my underpants in front of my friends’ parents.) In the morning, after some threatening and coersion by the chaperones, I got my pants back. They had spent the night as a tree decoration too high up to easily reclaim.
I went to a little school in Texas (25 people in our class). Every graduating class got a Senior trip. I convinced everyone to go with a 3 day cruise to the Bahamas because we could legally drink once we were at sea.
Now there were 7 girls in my class that were fuckable. I’d already held two of them down and run them through, so I had my eyes on the other five. I called them the fab five and started joking with my pals that I was going to nail all five on the cruise. One of them came up to me when we got on the ship and said, “I hear you want to have sex with several girls, and I’m one of them.” I said, “That’s right so you better watch yourself.” all nervous and dorky. She said, “Why don’t we take care of that now?” I almost puked from surprise but I took her offer. Another one bit the dust that night. Another the next morning, and so on. Turns out they caught wind of my plan and were in cahoots. Wasn’t that nice of them? I ended up getting laid five times on a three day cruise.
Jesus Christ. It just occured to me that I’m going to have to send my daughters to an all girl school.
Gretchen: Good Lawd!!! All in one trip?!? That’s a made-for-TV-after-school-special in the making!!
Shi-it!
I can understand wiggin’ out about the bat on the pillow thing. Twice, in the house I just moved out of, I had a bat fly down the stairs from the second floor. Jumpin’ Jesus…!! It was total chaos between ducking the dive bombing bat and trying to get my two pugs out the front door. They were going ape-shit! Both times the fuckin thing flew back up the steps. Never found a trace of either one of them…ever.
T-storm and Alice in WV — LOL.
The whole vagina elevator thing was a tear jerker.
And that dude on the train totally looks exactly like what Jeff described in his crinkly wrapper story.
@Hardoxdan – so know I know who to search for – excellent stuff – you should be working on your own book!
bikerchick: I know! Worse yet, some of us without big sisters and who hadn’t yet, er, breached womanhood were freaked out that this was how it would happen. “Dear God, It’s Margaret….What the FUCK?!”
Regarding the bat, the boy apparently only stopped screaming when his voice gave out. I say “apparently” because I heard no such noise, given how isolated the loser cabin was. But I can confirm he had no voice the next day. He was nearly catatonic also. Not long afterward he transferred to another school, probably to a place that didn’t put their students in positions where rabid bats could climb willy-nilly all over their angelic sleeping faces.
Personally I would have taken the bat over the, uh, menstrual tsunami.
By the way, Surf Reporters, great job with the commentary on this topic. A lot of these stories are awesome, in many senses of the word.
And SaucyDeb, I’ve always thought that the best way to see Europe is on one’s back. 😉
Gretchen: You are funny as hell!!!
bikerchick: Tanks! I’ll be here all week. 😉
paMike-USPS brought my new CD’s. Getting my freak on! Or my Thickfreakness on!
Ladies-You are cracking me up!
Jason-You should be ashamed of yourself you fucking pervert. Five girls in three days just disgusts me to no end.**
**I ran this through the Google translator and converted it from Christian Conservative back to english and it reads “Duuuude, fucking awesome, I’m so fucking jealous I could kill myself”
8th Grade trip to DC, circa 1978.
Chaperon’s were my dad age 35, two other dads age 45 or so.
Stayed at some small and off the beaten path flea bag hotel in the dark end of town because it was cheap and also my uncle’s (by marriage) cousin was the hotel manager.
First night there, all three dads are in the hotel bar and totally loaded along with said manager whom they all knew since Uncle’s cousin was a Wellsburg guy growing up.
All 17 or 18 of us classmates were allowed to help ourselves to ice and soda, etc from behind the hotel bar, shoot pool, play the jukebox, so I helped myself to a half gallon of Jack Daniels and smuggled it to my room. I also helped myself to a few packs of Winstons from behind the bar.
After lights out, it was party time with me and a few trusted buddies. Never did get busted for that one.
Side note. Uncle’s cousin, the hotel manager had three daughters who ended up tagging along with us for the museum boolshit and dinners and also stayed at the hotel. I remember their names were Johnette, Yvette, and Chevette, I think. All three were hot compared to the skanks and lardasses from my class, and we were all about the same age, one a year or two older, one also 8th grade and a year or two younger. They all smoked and were wild asses. I was impressed that even the youngest of the three could inhale stolen Winstons without coughing.
I found out a couple of years later that hotel manager’s wife died of cancer, he takes off with a twenty something and moves to Key West, and leaves these 3 teenagers all alone in their house back in the DC burbs. Of course, they all get into drugs, drop out of school, get pregnant, house gets condemned, they end up in foster homes, juvie hall, the whole mess. Likely all old crack whores now.
Jason, five different lays in 3 days. Way to go.
I cannot top that one and I am a total pig.
You guys all make my day.
I think the cap gun key chains are the same ones that were despised by Officer JD Hart. If this is correct, please elaborate Jeff.
Jason, you’re a goddamned liar.
We didn’t have any school trips. I wouldn’t have gone if we had. I’m a loaner.
Releases angry fart.
T. Farty McAppleass, on May 7th, 2010 at 6:10 pm Said: “I’m a loaner.”
So when do we get the real Farty back?
‘Resonant Fart’
Brit,
I’m listening to the Reds game on my Droid on my work speakers. I’m setting the timer on sneaky fart and letting it go, so at random times it sounds like Marty Brenneman or Jeff Brandtly are taking shits in the broadcast booth. I should do this while listening to NPR.
OMG!! I can reconize some of hte faces and there are going to be some people out to kick your tail for that one, LOL!!!!
I also went on our famoun 6th grade Washington DC trip, then I had the experience of going with my daughter on a few trips. Washington DC in 5ht grade, Disney World with the Concert Choir to sing at Disney World in 10t grade, a Cruise to sing in 11th grade, and I can’t tell you how many day trips I’ve been on with her.
I’ll keep my stories to myself, well for now anyway, lol!!
Hey, T Farty, you are a loaner?
I am a borrower, what is your interest rate? Maybe I will refinance.
I wish all of us could go on a trip together. Can you imagine? Weed, beer, schrooms, sex, Jack Daniels, bats, cigarettes, strip clubs, motorcycle tricks, yellowish brown spots on the linen, puke, period blood, rattlesnakes, missing pants, fire, M & M’s, people falling, mustard fights, bus rides…did I miss anything?
Midgets
Cheese
Farts
I missed out n the 6th grade AAA trip to DC, but my graddad was a sixth-grade teacher and got me on his school’s trip the following year. It fell on the weekend of May 9th, a week after Kent State. There were thousands of people everywhere, hippies and flower children ever way we turned, and some of the normal tourist sites were closed as a result. One of my best memories is of three stoned guys sitting on a bench passing a bottle of wine to each other, and they tried their best to get us to join them. One offered me the bottle for my hat…if my grandfather hadn’t been running uip trying to shoo us away I wold have traded.
First time I saw “Forrest Gump” and the scenes with the protests in DC I nearly flipped, because it was a huge deja vu rush from my past. And I still have my beanie tucked away somewhere, maybe we should start a photo gallery.
Have loads of band trip memories from 11 years of trips, 4th grade through to college….from a night in Summersville WV to trips to Mexico and Europe in high school…
T-storm,
That’s awesome. I told my boyfriend, and he got a good laugh about that.
Hahahahahaha. I forgot about midgets, cheese, hippies and farts. Sorry.
What about a farting midget, named moonbeam, smoking a bong made from cheese? Covers all bases?