So Princess Stardust’s class had a field trip to the local high school for Farm Day. It was definitely an experience (mostly enjoyable :P). But two incidents got me thinking.

When we roll up and get everyone situated, I immediately notice two dads in the sea of mommy volunteers. My initial reaction is respect. I respected these men for taking time our of their lives to experience this with their children. Let’s be honest, society doesn’t expect this from men. Moms are expected to make the sacrifices and very rarely do we get recognized for it.

But as the day wore on, it became obvious to me how low we actually set the bar for them. While the moms on the trip herded children, assisted the teachers, and took pictures, the dads stood towards the back chit-chatting amongst themselves. They were for the most part completely oblivious to what was going on with their children.

At one point, I started taking pictures of their children doing activities to send to the teacher. You know in case the moms who couldn’t be there wanted to see the activities that their children were enjoying. Other moms who couldn’t be there had already reached out to me to get them pictures of their kiddos, so a couple more wouldn’t really be a burden.

I let it annoy me more than it probably should have but these dads were probably the type that would expect gold stars and pats on the back for being an involved dad. They probably had these grandiose notions about how great they are as fathers and partners. And the sad truth is that these self-absorbed me were possibly more involved than 75% of the dads of the kids that I know.

I’m gonna stop ranting about this while I’m ahead. The differences between the expectations placed on mothers versus fathers could be another whole post.

The other incident was more of a humorous one. So when PST was a wee little Pre-K participant, she had this one friend in class that she talked about all the time. It was always Sansa this and Sansa that. So after one parent activity I approached Sansa’s mom to try to arrange a play date between our daughters.

I introduce myself as PST’s mom and tell her that she talks about Sansa all the time and that I would love to set aside some time for a play date between our children. She looks at me and starts speaking in Spanish while shaking her head apologetically. I don’t speak Spanish outside of a few phrases. The conversation ends awkwardly.

Fast forward to a little over a year later and we are both waiting for the kiddos to unload off the bus and she is standing next to me. Suddenly she starts asking questions about the field trip in better English than most people I know in this little rural area. I am stunned. My first inclination is to laugh. But that would be totally rude.

So I just answer her questions. She obviously didn’t remember out initial interaction. I couldn’t really blame her. It is freaking ingenious. If I could pull it off, I totally would excuse myself from any possible awkward social situations.

So yeah….that’s the end of my observations/musings about the field trip. I’m guess I will get the hang of this eventually.