About a month ago, Susan signed up to chaperon a zoo field trip with Morgan’s class. Unfortunately, a business trip popped up on the same date. When Susan told Morgan’s teacher she wouldn’t be able to go, Morgan’s teacher informed Susan that so many people had cancelled that the trip might not happen. That’s when I was asked to take Susan’s place. I don’t know why everybody acted so surprised when I said “yes”. I love doing things like that.

In my mind, I figured there would be about 4 adults and about 20 kids. When I arrived, there were about 20 adults and 25 kids. For some reason I thought I would be in charge of half a dozen kids or so. When it came down to it, I was just in charge of keeping track of my own.

Each kid was given a lime green cape to wear. At the zoo, that made our kids pretty easy to identify. It also made it easy for the group to stick together. All you had to do was look around and follow the kids wearing green capes. When we got to the zoo we saw kids from different schools wearing maroon, blue, orange, and yellow capes. Then we saw some poor-ass school that didn’t have any capes, and their kids were tied together with twine. At one point four kids running to the bathroom actually surround me and tied me up in twine.

After wandering around the zoo for over two hours we ended up at Aquaticus, which is where the dolphins are. I thought Morgan would really like the dolphin show. I later found out that all the dolphins died a few years ago. So instead of a dolphin show, they had an Elvis impersonator. To be honest, they could have brought a guy out to club a baby seal at that point. I was just glad to be sitting down and resting my feet.

So after Elvis finished, a local author (Tammi Sauer, author of “Chicken Dance”) came out and talked to the kids about her book and the importance of reading. She then did a silly animal song that Morgan liked. Then, a half Elvis, half Chicken (“Elvis Poultry”) came out and read the book to the kids.

When Elvis Poultry came out, he said, “Look at all the kids with their Elvis capes on.” ELVIS CAPES? NOW I GET IT. Wow, only took me three hours to put it all together.

I later learned that the field trip was part of an event called “Reading Across America” or something. Morgan got a free copy of the book (which she loves) and Target donated the capes, paid for the zoo trip, and donated 1,300 lunches. I think that’s pretty cool, and the next time I need something from the store I’m going to make a special trip to Target to get it. So there.