Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The field trip

There is almost nothing in this world that can make you feel old and out of shape faster than spending the day with running with a herd of first graders.

I took the day off work yesterday to spend a lot of fun-filled hours with the youngest goober. Two of those hours were spent on the school bus with a whole bunch of little curtain climbers. Oh, THAT was fun! My ears were ringing by the time we arrived at the St. Louis City Museum. School busses are just as awful as I remember them being, by the way.

In all the years we've lived in the St. Louis area I've never been to the city museum. I've been just about everywhere else, but never there. I don't know why.

Holy cow. What a day! We climbed, crawled, jumped, ran, explored, swung and bounced all day long. My knees hurt today, but that's okay. Unruly and I both nodded off on the bus ride home, along with about 90 percent of the rest of the first graders. It kind of smelled like kid sweat.

The biggest kid-friendly feature of the city museum is a four story "jungle gym" built with pieces-parts of just about anything: rebar, former construction steel, a couple of old planes, a stone castle tower, cables, an antique fire engine, old culvert pipe, steel wire, giant wooden vats that were once used to brew some kind of alcoholic beverage and on and on and on.

It was absolutely incredible. And a bit scary. I didn't climb up in the four-story high "tubing" made of rebar and wire (yes, I was a chicken), but Unruly did. She couldn't get enough of it, that little daredevil. We crawled through tunnels and slid down a three-story slide that was FAST!

By the end of the day I was starting to feel old, but sliding down slides, swinging on ropes and crawling through dark tunnels sure made me feel like a kid again.

And that's a good feeling, even if it was only for a few hours.

The best part? An entire day of just Unruly and I spending time together and letting our hair down. That was the best part.

5 comments:

Kathy said...

That sounds like a blast. But a 4 story jungle gym? Oh MY! Those elementary school teachers deserve a ton of credit for keeping up with the youngsters every day.

Krista said...

Sounds like tons of fun!
And if you think being on a bus with a bunch of first graders is bad, don't try junior highers! *shudder* and just imagine, the teachers get to go on EVERY field trip with them... ;)

Anonymous said...

I would have fallen asleep on the bus just to keep from getting motion sick!!

Anonymous said...

anonymous said... above @ 3:34pm is me... A. Di :)

MP said...

I love that place...last time we went I did all that climbing..OMG I was sore for a week..but it sure makes you feel like a kid again, kind of like the movie Big.