Field trip

Every year I manage to miss as many days of school as I can without setting off some administrator's "Why Is That Asshole Never Here" radar. I get three personal days every year, and I also manage to use eight to 10 sick days as well. Of course, I use those only when I am definitely not sick, as I adhere to the ass backward philosophy that believes there's no greater waste of a perfectly fine sick day than to be home feeling sick. Hell, if I'm sick, I'll go to work and continue to feel lousy, because I usually feel like shit there anyway. Plus, I can try extra hard to spew some of my contagion toward my biggest pain in the ass students in a sociopathic, selfish attempt to infect them with whatever it is that is ailing me, thus assuring that an asshole kid or two will have to stay home for a few days, making my life that much easier once I start to feel better. But if I take a sick day and stay home from school, I want to feel good, goddamnit.

I also manage to finagle my way into numerous in-service activities that require me to miss a day or more of school. That bullshit conference next month? Hell yeah, that's all me, Mr. Principal. Take two days and head down south for a conference on how to motivate struggling learners? Why, that sounds fascinating - please count me in! You say some state committee has actually requested the services of Mr. Bitters, needing his experience and expertise for a five-day work session on this or that bullshit committee? Well, as much as I absolutely hate leaving my needy, hungry-for-instruction charges, I'll bite the bullet and do my time for the greater good of education in this state. In the meantime, go ahead and book me my single room at the Sheraton for the week.

Once I add up the personal days, the sick days and the in-service days, I can usually manage to miss about 15 to 18 days out of the school year, which is pretty impressive, considering I am contracted to teach for only 180 days. But there is yet another way to get out of the classroom and avoid teaching, and I try to do this three to five times per year.

No, not jury duty, although one warm sunny April I managed to miss seven days of school for that funfest. Most days I was home by 10:30 after not being selected, although two other days I actually had to sit on juries, one of which required the very stressful task of determining a man's guilt in the case of swiped 9-volt battery. Yes, we tied up a courtroom, a judge and a prosecutor for an entire day over a 9-volt batter lifted from a Safeway by an old man. He was guilty, by the way. I was the foreman of that very important jury. Nowadays, when I tell people I was a foreman on a jury and they ask what the case was, I just wince and say, "battery case," and then shake my head, as if the memories are too gruesome and painful for me to go into.

But back to the other way to get days off. I am referring to the Field Trip. Ahhh, there's nothing like the reassuring aroma of the American school bus as you pull away from the building for another glorious day of Not Teaching.

Most of the chickenshit teachers in our school are always amazed that I take my kids out of the building, especially some of the hoods and future inmates that I cram into that bus. I hear things like, "You're taking THOSE kids to the Holocaust Museum?! They can barely spell 'oven', let alone 'jew.' " Or perhaps, "Are you sure you want to take HIM to a Shakespeare play? Have you cleared this with his parole officer?"

Those teachers live in fear of the kids, so I can understand their apprehension. And to be honest, some of these kids do conduct a reign of terror in the school for as long as they can manage to stay there before being expelled. But I've learned that once you get them out of the building, they revert to the scared little know-nothings they are in real life, and the biggest badasses in school will often turn into the neediest, most scaredest little pussies in the group once they step off that bus in the big city.

Before we get off the bus, I'll always stand up and joke that we have to hold hands and walk in a line, much like elephants doing the trunk-to-tail thing at the circus. Instead of laughing, most of them seem almost eager to do so. Keep in mind that we are not exactly taking these trips into the war-zone ghetto areas, either. When I go see plays, they are usually on the campus of George Washington University, which is just blocks from the White House, so you can be pretty goddamn sure that we are not going to have any kids swept up by a roving band of hooded marauders. (Then again, with this current administration ...)

Have I ever lost a kid? Not even close. Even on those trips where I can let them roam on their own to a certain extent, such as a museum experience, most of them like to be in viewing distance of the teacher or another chaperone. They live in terror of being left behind, so they are always back at the bus or the designated meeting area in plenty of time. These are the kids who can't make it to class on time more than two days in a row, but on a field trip, they develop little atomic clocks in their brains. Combine that with their fear of being somewhere new without mommy or daddy, and it pretty much ensures that I'll have my full complement of kiddies once it's time to go have lunch.

Which is, as you might remember from your own field trip days, the whole point of the field trip to a kid anyway. When I announce a field trip, it doesn't matter what the destination or the cost is, all they want to know is where we'll be eating. I could say, "I have procured the services of the world's first time machine, and we can go anywhere we want in the history of the world!" Instead of arguing about where we'd visit, the first questions would be more along the lines of, "When are we eating?" "Can we eat during the Dark Ages?" "Awww, I want to eat during the Paleazoic Age!" "Will I have to exchange my cash for Ducats?"

I'll be honest, lunch usually is the best part of the trip. I saw one tall skinny kid eat four Big Macs on a trip this year. One day, as I was sitting on a curb outside a McDonald's one sunny spring afternoon, a kid plopped down next to me and proceeded to light up a cigarette, just to watch me react. Of course, I completely ignored it and just started talking to him. I'm sure that was the most disappointing cigarette he ever smoked. Just last week, I took six older kids to a major daily newspaper, and afterward we went to the "cool" section of the city for an awesome Mexican lunch. Since I was driving that day, I refrained from having a few Shiner Bocks, but it was still a grand time.

Yes, the out-of-school day off can be a great treat, even when I have to actually do some work, like I'll have to do this June when I go do my work on the state testing committee. The work will be tedious, the other teachers will get on my nerves from time to time and I will admit to a nagging fear that maybe I won't be up to the task this year, as if maybe I'll have lost my touch in doing the work we do. But right now, none of those worries are my main concern. Something bigger and more important is wearing on me as I anticipate my trip: I wonder what they'll be serving for lunch.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.