When I was in elementary, we went to see the Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra perform Peter and the Wolf (I think.  Since I never actually LISTENED to the story, I really can’t remember!).

We had a choice.  We could stay behind and be bored out of our minds at the school all day, most likely completing homework, or we could go with the majority of the school on the field trip.  The problem with that was that all our friends were going to the symphony.  I’m not saying that they wanted to go any more than I wanted to go, but we were kids.  What did we know about forming a resistance group?

It’s really sad how we decided that the mind-numbingly boring version of  P & W was better than sitting at school all day.  Ahhh, to be young and stupid.

I can remember the teacher handing out the permission slips.

“Now class, you need to take these home to your parents and have them sign.  Then, you must bring them back to me or you can’t go!”

She said this with a demeaning, sorrowful quality, like, if you don’t return the permission slip, you will flunk out of school, start doing drugs, and turn to a life of crime!

There would be a collective sigh and a few oh, man!‘s heard throughout the classroom.  NO ONE wanted to go.

But we all went.  We sat in the balcony of the Civic Center Music Hall in downtown Oklahoma City and made fart noises while all of the boys giggled and all the girls whispered, “gross!”

I couldn’t tell you how long the performance lasted.  I can tell you this: it was somewhere between 3 days and 14 years.  That’s how elementary students measure time.  God it was long.  That’s mostly the reason we were constantly in trouble for talking or standing or spitting or farting.

I know, the school was trying to instill a little culture into our lives.  And I’m sure there were some students who loved the performance and listened intently.  I’m a music lover and I would cherish the opportunity to go see that performance today, at age 42.  But at age 10, P & W took a backseat to boogers, farts, and other gross things.

One of the best field trips we went on was to the old Daily Joklahoman building.  This was before they build their lonely 12 story tower on Britton and the Broadway Extension.

The Daily Oklahoman had an old printing center on Broadway and 4th in downtown Oklahoma City.  Every year we would go on a field trip to the facility where some poor guide would walk us through the facility and show us how they printed their propaganda filled paper every day.

Here’s where we write the Jesus columns.  And here’s where we bash homosexuals.  Listen up children.  You don’t want to be the subject of this room.  Remember, Jesus hate fags and lesbos!

This room is where we fabricate the various pictures you see in the paper.  And over here is where E.K. Gaylord sits in his magnificent, solid gold chair and spews hatred down upon us all so that we may produce our unbelievably biased newspaper for your parents to enjoy and influence you, the next generations of illiterates!

We would trudge through the halls of the building and act interested in everything.  The truth was, we were only interested in one thing: where was that monster printing press and can we see it in action?

We were taken into the room where the printing plates were used to impression a sheet of 1/8 inch cardboard that was used in the press to print the paper.  The cardboard was pressed using a MASSIVE steel roller.  This thing was HUGE and all the little boys stood in a circle and asked questions like, “what if I stuck Bobby’s hand in there?  What would it look like when it came out on the other side?“  Once again, the girls would say gross and the boys would look around the room, silently wondering how many of them it would take to hold Bobby down so we could get his hand INTO that machine!

We took other field trips.  Some were out to the cowboy hall of fame.  It’s actually called the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, but we really just called it the Redneck Art Gallery!

We often went to Stage Center down by the Myriad Gardens.  Stage Center is the ugliest and weirdest performance facility in our city.  Most people hate it.  I love it.

I’m sure we took more field trips to other equally boring places, but I just can’t remember right now.  There’s not a lot to see in Oklahoma City…at least in the 70s there wasn’t.

These days the children can go down to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art or the cool new downtown library.  They might even head over to the Myriad gardens where they can see the heroin addicts hang out across the street at the bus station.

“Suzy, that’s a crack whore.  Do you know what a crack whore is? That’s what you’ll become if you don’t have your parents sign your permission slip to go see Peter and the Wolf!”

The kids could also go to the Ford Center.  That’s our new state of the art….ha ha ha, I almost got that out without laughing.  The Ford Center is our $87 million Piece Of Shit arena.  In case you’re wondering, $87 million will get you the “Yugo” of arenas.  We had to pass another $100 million bond issue to fix it up only a few years after it was built because it’s such a joke.

Dave Matthews played there ONCE.  He’s been back one more time since that concert and had to play at our minor league baseball stadium.  Sad…

Anyway, the students could walk the concrete halls of the Ford Center and….well, that’s about all they can do.  There’s really nothing else to see if you exclude the barren Big Money Suites.

“Class, this is where the highest paid CEO in the country watches the Oklahoma City Thunder lose games!”

If you really want to give the kids something to remember, head on down to the riverwalk and take the kids for a ride on one of the boats.  When finished, you can head on up to Hooters for lunch and then to the Skky Bar to watch horny co-eds wear micro-mini skirts and get drunk while some random guy tries to run his hand down her panties.  Now that’s an education!

I think the best field trip I’ve ever heard of was out of a story David Sedaris told in one of his books.  I can’t remember which book though.

David is gay.  His boyfriend Hugh grew up all over the world because his father worked for the State Department or something cool like that.  So Hugh went to a bunch of schools in all sorts of backwater countries like Bolivia or Moldova or Mississippi.

I can’t remember the country, but the class was to go on a field trip to a slaughter house.  I think they were in 4th grade.  {Can you imagine taking THAT permission slip home to your parents?}

They were led into a room and they all stood in a circle around the tour guide who had a goat chained to a post.  The tour guide spoke for a little while about the goat and the various properties of the meat and such.

He then pulled out a gun, blew the goat’s brains out.  He then turned to the kids and said, “Ok, let’s start the tour.”

It has been a long time since I read the book, that goat might have been a pig.  But I’m pretty sure I remember it as a goat….yeah, like that’s the disturbing part of the story!!

So the next time your kid comes home to complain to you that he/she needs you to sign a permission slip so he can go with the class to see 200 senior citizens re-enact life in a 1780′s village, tell them that goat story.

Wait, only tell that to your child if she’s a little girl.

If you have a little boy he might ask if the village will re-enact the killing of the goat!

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