Another egg against the wall

This Thursday I chaperoned at V's school field trip with my father. Initially we were to take two separate groups, but more parents arrived then pre-planned, so I was double-teamed with my father. In our group we had five boys and three girls, one of which was V. The boys were all rambunctious ne'er-do-wells, very 'gangsta-licious', who were harder to track down then the girls, who were good at remaining within the group. One of the boys had a girlfriend he was always sneaking off to (We're talking 6th grade here, just so you know), another (dubbed 'Big Tony' by my dad) wore a very red t-shirt that is apparently against the rules of the school. Gang colors and all. He very well knew not to wear it, according to V's inside information Tony has been in trouble many a-time for wearing it or one like it to school. He was told by his teacher not to take off his black jacket, asked me to keep an eye on that--which ended up being the single most aggravating job of the entire trip.

You can't exactly smack the kids upside the head, you know? There are rules against that sort of behavior. Sometimes I wonder why.

The school--along with what must have been two or three others--went to visit the downtown San Jose Tech museum, home of the domed I-Max. It was a very interesting, albeit very crowded, place of science and technology. Personally I was having a blast checking out all the nifty exibits, but the kids were less then enthusiastic. Aside from Big Tony and the girlfriend boy, the three others were alway taking off from our group to hang out with friends from other groups, strictly against orders, as well as just wandering off in particular. We wasted what must have been an hour out of the three we were roaming the museum proper simply searching for our little lost boys.

Then there was V, who clung to either my side or dads side, and did not take much interest in what was going on. She was more into criticizing her schoolmates and telling me (probably dad, too, but I don't know) how very annoying and useless they all were. Isabella, the only Asian-American in our group (surprising considering that's about 44% of our population), was a very quiet, very shy girl. She was sweet, though, and because of that I actually let her go and hang out with friends from other groups. Isabella always came back when I called, see. Isabella also was very interested in the science aspect of our fieldtrip. While we (the group) were making our way to another side of the third-floor exhibit, she flat-out stopped at a laboratory experiment being set up on a table by one of the Tech employees. If it had been anything besides learning I would have roped her into going along with the rest of the group, but Isabella's eyes lit up. I could see it. That little girl was very, very interested in the experiments. In fact, the only words I could get out of her were about science, biology, experimentation.

Ends up the table set-up was an experiment involving the making of insulin by straining bacteria and another substance in test tubes. The boys ended up drinking their end experiment sometime during the I-Max performance, but Isabella tucked hers carefully away.
The I-Max movie was on ancient Greece and it was narrated by the woman from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It was an inspiring film; I especially loved the computer-generated rendition of the Parthenon with the gold and ivory sculpture of Athena. When I saw it, I cried. I couldn't help it. It was a very moving show in total, I cried several times throughout. Had to keep it mostly hidden from the kidlets, though... it seems like any human emotion around a child is forbidden these days.

Above everything that happened that day—the good and the bad—There was one event, one girl, who was in our group that out shined the entire day. In fact, she has been the premise of several philosophical, psychological debates between my father and I. Now, to be fare, by father and I do the philosophical and psychological in-depth conversations on a daily basis. But she hit our radar and hit it hard. Her name was Jenn.