jumpingfish

The bus driver knew where to go. (They always seem to.) He took us up a tree-lined drive and around a large parking lot at the end of which there was a sign reading “Group Entrance”. Oddly, there was no one else to be seen: no other groups, no cars, no busses, no employees waiting at the door to usher us in. Just a barren concrete ramp descending to locked double doors.

This was the Museum of Science and Industry. We had an appointment, but as we were in transit, our guide had muttered something about having lost an hour. It was late afternoon at this point, perhaps explaining why it was only us there. Explaining why the door was shut and locked. Why knocking had no effect… at first.

Yet eventually, someone did open the door, and we started filing in.

Having assumed the role of final bookends, Ms Johns and I hung back, following the kids and they walked down the ramp. Here there were employees waving us in. They were dressed in international orange smocks with phones in their hands and badges hanging from their necks and concerned looks on their faces.

“They’re two hours late!” one of them whispered to the another. I paid no attention.

One floor up, the kids dispersed. Some went to the multi-story tornado simulator. Others went to the stainless steel sliding tunnel in the Powering the Future exhibit. Others went … otherwhere.

“Excuse me,” one of the orange-clad employees said. I could barely hear her. I leaned in.

“What?”

“We will be having an evacuation drill in 30 minutes.”

“Oh,” I said. “What are we supposed to do?”

“We’ll tell you.”

And so, after a few minutes of standing at the center of a vortex and sliding down a stainless steel tunnel and doing the other cool science-y things that the museum is known for, a piercing alarm sounded.

People with orange smocks appeared out of nowhere and began shepherding us. They were well organized. Very efficient. No museum goers were left behind. They funneled us to the escalators and then to the main entrance and then out the doors. Most of us ended up on the broad green lawn in front of the museum under a glorious blue sky and a warm sun… most of us.

Where were the others? This was alarming. Ms John walked off to get answers. But soon the rest of the group came around the left side of the building led by museum staff in orange smocks. They had evacuated by a different path, along with many others who were in whichever wing had evacuated that way. 

After a brief wait, most of the people on the green were told to go home. It was closing time. To our relief, we were escorted back inside. The orange clad employees walked us across the museum, past the vortex which was still spinning its three-story tornado. We descended the stairs we had come up not so long ago, back to the double doors, and out onto the concrete ramp. Our relief had been premature. It was closing time, after all, …

… but what an action-packed 45 minutes it had been! 

It had been a long day. We’d be leaving early in the morning for the bus ride into the Loop and up Lake Shore Drive to Northwestern. But we gave the kids a bit of time to get snacks and stuff before retiring for the night.

My alarm rang: 9:00 tape-in-time.

I took the roster and walked into the hallway. Room by room I would knock, loudly over the din coming from within. The door would open. 

“I need three faces. I see only two.” 

“Noah is in the shower.” 

“Ask him to peer out.”

“Noah! Mr. Hasan needs to see you.”

The bathroom door would crack open. A face obscured by emerge from the steam. So I would put a check mark next to their room in the roster, remind them of wake-up time, say good night, and pull the door shut. Then I would press a strip of blue painter’s tape across the door and frame.

The idea is this. There is no reason (short of a fire alarm) that their door should ever open. If it does, there is no way to pull it shut and reapply the tape from the inside. Anti-shenanigans assurance.We sleep soundly, knowing that they’re where they’re supposed to be.

…

Room 433 was at the end of the hall, around a corner, distressingly close to the stairs that lead to the fifth floor where the girls’ rooms were. Jake, Jack and John were assigned to that room, only one of whom was there. Jake was in the lobby talking to a Chicago friend who came to visit. Jack was also in the lobby getting another key card, because he always seems to lose his. That left John alone in the room. As I walked up, he was standing in the doorway (waiting for something?).

“Why hello, Mr. Hasan,” he said.

“Hi John. They’ll be here soon,” I said. “Just stay put.”

He assured me he would as he closed the door. I turned away and walked to room 429.

Mere seconds later I heard a sound in the hallway and turned to see John peering around the corner (waiting to see if I was going back to my room?). 

“John. Go to your room,” I said. “It’s after 9 o’clock.”

He went back. And so did I, to make sure he closed the door. But of course I couldn’t tape him in, as his roommates were not there.

…

Eventually, Jake and Jake did return, and I was able to tape the three of them into room 433. Then I turned away and walked to room 425. Mere seconds later I heard the sound of a door opening. Painter’s tape snapping. 

I was only three steps away from the room I had just taped shut. I quickly turned around. There was John looking up sheepishly with Jake standing in the shadows with a toothbrush in his mouth.

I looked at John, whose hand was still on the doorknob. He looked up at the ripped painter’s tape.

“Well, that’s unfortunate.”

The rest of the night was uneventful.

Our scheduled departure was for Monday at 5:30. That meant getting to the airport at 3:00.

To clarify: 3:00 in the morning. Security doesn’t even open until 3:00! Certainly no Jo’s coffee. No Taco Deli breakfast tacos. And what about getting every one of 37 high school sophomores to show up on time at such an obscene hour?

“Oh no…” she said a few days before we left. “I can see some kids not making it.” 

She spoke from experience. She’s been teaching for decades. She was my grown son’s high school homeroom teacher, for heaven’s sake. She knows these kids. She’s  traveled with them. On the Thailand trip a few times. And Costa Rica. And Panama. (Not sure about Rome.)

“So what happens if they don’t get there on time?” I asked.

“They get left behind,” she said. “Their families pay all that money, and they don’t go.”

My eyes widened. 

“It has happened.”

…

I grabbed our student roster and yanked out the names of students I knew — those whom I have taught: about a dozen. I sent an email note to all of them. Remember, I said. We’re all showing up at 3:00am. Sharp. Don’t be that person who doesn’t make it on time. See you there!

… 

A weekend passed, and the fateful morning came. I got out of the Lyft (because my fair and industrious partner had not the slightest interest in shuttling me at such an hour). I walked through the glass doors as they automatically swished open.

It was 3:00 on the dot.

Thirty feet inside the doors off to the right there were two teachers with their arms wrapped around our travel binders and a gaggle of shockingly alert-looking high school sophomores with backpacks and rolling suitcases and smiling faces. Smiling faces. On sophomores. On a Monday morning. At three-friggin-o’clock in the morning.

This was a good sign.

We took the first batch of them through security just after it opened. Within 20 minutes, the everyone was there. The first 34 or so of them got through security quickly. The last three stragglers arrived ten minutes late (but of course, our announced time accounted for that), and on balance even they didn’t have to wait in line long.

And, mirabile dictu, when the doors of the airplane closed, 37 students and 5 teachers were…

…all in our places with bright shining faces. Good morning to you!

We drove four days from Michigan to Texas. We prefer to go slowly mostly on two-lane roads. That makes for long days — made even longer by our leisurely wake-up/breakfast way of starting the days.

Long days mean we spend no time exploring the parks, but we did a bit of that on our northward trek. And after 20+ days on the road, we were yearning for home. So four long days it was.

Day 1

Heidi’s farmstand and bakery was conveniently along our chosen route home — or rather, we changed our usual route to pass by Heidi’s, because…

Day 2

Not long after we passed thru the Missouri bootheel, we got to Paragould in northeast Arkansas. We were on our way to our site at Crowley’s Ridge State Park.

“There’s a Dog-n-Suds!” I said. 

“What!? Let’s eat HERE!” Trudy shouted with glee.

Alas, the parking lot was too small for a car pulling a trailer. So we resigned ourselves to a tortellini dinner and got back on the road.

Day 3 

For a second night, we ran the AC just for a few minutes to cool down. (The thing makes a horrific racket but is a life saver the the temperatures are in the upper 90s.)

One of the first things people asked us about our trailer on this trip was “Does it have AC?”. You could hear the anxiety in their voices. Our answer was always an immediate “Oh yes”. We chose not to add “but we only run it for a few minutes”.

Day 4 

Our half-way lunch stop this year was at Davey Dogwood Park in Palestine, TX. The park has shaded picnic tables and hundreds of other table/pedastal-like things that we were at a loss to understand. 2’x2’, knee high, no seating. What are those things!? 

And then, most of a day later… home sweet home.

For the fourth or fifth time of the night, Izzy shook. Her collar and tags rattled from the living room.

She’s been doing this ever since we returned from the north — needing to go out several times in the night. Having left it to the fair and industrious Trudy to take her out the previous three or four times, this was my turn. I slouched out of bed into the living room, where Izzy was waiting next to the patio door. I could just barely make out her gray shape in the dim light that came in thru the blinds. When I reached down for the leash, her tail started wagging.

Click. I opened the patio door, and we stepped out.

She walked slowly across the patio and stepped into the grass (such as it is). And she began to walk in tight meanderings, sniffing as she went. There was a fox out there during the day. Izzy new and decided it deserved investigation.

The moon was high in the sky — just past full. The Walnut and Elm cast dark shadows on the white-lit ground. Izzy pulled at the leash, moving to the corner of the yard where the fox had some over the fence. She evidently required more evidence.

“Nope,” I said. 

She pulled, but I pulled the other way, to which she acquiesced, as she always does, because she’s a good girl.

We made our way back across the lawn (such as it is), both of us casting shadows on. And we left the fox evidence behind.

That is my report.