Surfing the Inner N8

On Friday I joined Carolyn’s kindergarten class for a field trip to Janes Island, a park in Crisfield, Maryland.  It was the first time I met her class this year.  These kids are so funny!  On the field trip they went crabbing, played games, made some crafts, and went on a scavenger hunt.

Some highlights:

• One little girl had a band-aid on her finger and after about an hour she came up to me complaining that her finger hurt.  When I looked, I saw that she had wrapped her band-aid as tight as a tourniquet.  Her finger looked like a balloon that was squeezed in the middle and her fingertip was dark purple.  I quickly ripped off the band-aid and her finger returned to normal.  Once the panic had passed, it was pretty funny!
• Every year when I visit her class, Carolyn’s students try to figure out just what our relationship is.  It’s almost always the girls.  Some think Carolyn is my mom or sister or daughter, others think she’s my girlfriend.  One little girl, after I said Carolyn’s my wife, said quizzically: “She’s your life?”  When I first told the girls that Carolyn and I are married, one of them said, “Eeewww!”  Another one said, “You’re nasty!”
• The day before the field trip, Carolyn had explained to her class that she was having a baby.  The next day, one little girl asked me, “Can Mrs. Hyde have a baby soon?”  Another one asked her if she was having the baby tomorrow.  Carolyn’s expecting this will probably go on all year long.
• These kids just don’t get the idea of a scavenger hunt.  We had a list of objects to find, and every time I read the next item on the list, the kids would pick up whatever they saw next.  For example, I said, “We need to find something beautiful.”  One girl picked up a dead, jagged, broken branch, held it up to me, smiled proudly, and boasted, “This is beautiful!”
• One of the park employees played a game with the kids to teach them about habitats and survival.  At one point she asked them, “If you were a deer, what would you need to survive?”  One little guy piped up: “A gun and a bow and arrow!”
• It was time for recess when we got back to the school.  Several kids were drawing in the dirt with sticks, so I tried to teach them how to play tic tac toe.  We played a couple games, then I walked away to a different part of the playground.  Several minutes later one of the kids came over and asked me to walk back to where they were drawing in the dirt.  This little girl had scratched a cross in the dirt–her two lines made up her version of a tic tac toe board.  Around the cross were some X’s and O’s.  Two little girls were squatting there.  They looked at their game, then up at me, then back at their game, then back at me.  Finally one of the girls asked me: “Who won?”