#549 School field trip day

Neil Pasricha

It all starts with the permission slip.

Yes, when teachers send them home before the bell rings so parents can rubber stamp the bumpy yellow bus trip to the museum, then it’s on, my friends, it’s on.

Soon the days count down and the buzz builds up as the class gets ready for the day away from school. The middle-ages unit wraps up at Medieval Times, paintings are handed in before the art gallery, and everyone mails a friend a letter before the tour of the post office.

On the morning of the big day you wake up with some extra pep in your step because you know we’re all going far away. It’s time to skip the portables, soggy sandwiches, and long afternoons with the Spanish teacher.

It’s time to do something different.

It’s time … to go for a ride.

Yes, whether it’s the petting zoo, chocolate factory, or a long hike in the woods, it’s time to enjoy the school vacation with some of the following perks:

1. Subs in the house. Taking thirty screaming seven-year-olds to the planetarium is a bit much, so most teachers call in backups in the form of parent chaperones. These subs act like a sweet and sweatered army of substitutes and don’t know enough names or have enough power to mess up the fun. Of course, that’s assuming they’re not your mom or dad. If that happens, your day is done.

2. Wheels on the bus. They go round and round on the way there and back. Yeah, we all gang rush into the slippery seatbelt-free seats and enjoy a loud, laughing party on wheels. There are loud screechy songs, secret makeout sessions, and some friendly gestures at passing motorists. This is also when the classroom’s social structure is on display too — from the cool kids at the back to the nerds sitting with the teacher up front. I really did love sitting up front though. I mean, how about that view?

3. Sealing it in. A friend and I were strolling quickly through an art gallery a couple years back when we stumbled on a group of kindergartners holding a rope and looking at splotchy art paintings. I’ll never remember the jaw-dropping look of pure head-tilting amazement from the little boy at the end of the group — eyes twinkling, mittens hanging out his winter coat, and his whirring brain soaking and swallowing up something beautiful on the wall. And it’s true: field trips often help seal in the learning. Chalk one up for school.

So… let’s enjoy the memories, let’s enjoy the moments, and let’s enjoy the parking lot speed bumps. Yes, let’s all love those special days when dusty chalkboards fade away and buses wheel us down the freeway, far away, far away, far away.

AWESOME!

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Photos from: here, here, here, and here

2,210 thoughts to “#549 School field trip day”

  1. finding a pair of matching socks in the huge drawer of singles. Your feet just feel like they belong….at last!

    AWESOME!

  2. getting the exact creamer to sugar to coffee ratio. Its always different, but when you get it just right, you can smile and drink your coffee and know that this day started off on the right foot.

    AWESOME!

  3. Re-reading a really good book

    and realising that you don’t remember exactly what happened so you can be surprised all over again.

    Awesome!!

  4. When you wake up at 2am and think its time to go to work, and then you look at your cell phone and realize what time it REALLY is. There is nothing better then being resigned to wake up, and then realize you still have 4 more hours to sleep.

    AWESOME!

  6. This may be a girl thing, but…

    When the public restroom is unexpectantly immaculate. It’s spotless, smells nice, and has hand lotion.

  7. Setting the high score at an arcade game. You’re the King of the place, and everyone below you is your inferior.

    AWESOME!

  9. Tell me if this has already been mentioned. It must have!

    When you change channels when an advert break starts and switch back exactly as it ends.

    It was a risky game but you won! You haven’t been manipulated by the evil mind games of the advertisers. You’re a wizard with a tv remote wand. Fellow tv watchers look at you with a mixture of awe and lust.

    Of course we all know the perils of this game. Switching back only to realise that you’ve missed a few seconds of dialogue that may well have been crucial to the plot. Often times you allow a buffer of one or two adverts as you switch back just that little bit earlier than you should have. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You played it safe. Thats fine.

    But on the few occasions that your spidey senses kick in and you get just right…

    Awesome.

  11. green lights..
    when your on your way somewhere exciting, and you just cant wait to get there, and despite all the turns and bumps in the road, the feeling of seeing a green light is truly ..
    AWESOME

  13. First I posted my entry in the wrong thread and then it didn’t post at all. Come on, third time’s the charm!

    Cooking with someone you love. I have five siblings and we all spent a lot of time in the kitchen together growing up – throwing apple cores at each other, snapping each other with wet towels, teaching ourselves the awesomeness of a meal cooked with love. Then I moved out and married a man who likes to cook too. One of my favorite things is to spend an hour or two with him in the kitchen – pinching his butt when he won’t move out of my way, reading recipes together, and generally not being able to eat the food when it’s done thanks to all the sampling we did during the cooking process!

  14. Fortune Cookie Money

    When you go to pull a bill out of your wallet to pay for whatever and you realize there’s something written on it, then you realize that the thing written on your money is the perfect little slice of life for where you are at the moment in yours, it’s like fortune cookie money. So you hold onto that bill just a little longer before passing it on to the next person to discover – AWESOME!

    (recent example of fortune cooke money I received, written on the back of a one dollar bill it read: Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this Earth to climb.)

    1. I *love* this too. not so much the next morning though after about 3.5-4 hours of sleep.

  16. looking at a newly cleaned room after you’ve spent hours cleaning it

    There is nothing like the feeling one gets when all their hard work has payed off and they can sit back and see the results. Whether it be a common area room, your room, the dreaded bathroom, or the kitchen. After a deep clean, vacuum, mop, wipe down everything, and dust job, being able to sit back, smell the cleaning spray lingering in the air, and bask in the cleanness of the room is awesome.

  17. KEYS! (and i mean the metal kind)

    how awesome is it that all keys look the same until little triangle sized pieces are cut and formed to make it specific to your special place in need of an extra key?

    and what do you get with keys?
    you unlock the doors to home or your car or a secret place that simply must be locked!

    and an added plus of keys… the wonder of keychains and all the glory that comes when you find one with your name spelled correctly on it!

  18. sharpening your pencil into a perfect cone, where no side is sharper/duller than another

  20. When someone spells your name correctly in the first try!

    It’s awesome when people who needs to write down your name for some reason spell it correctly in the first try – without having you to spell it for them.

  21. finding a lost pair to something after its been missing forever

    whether it be earrings or socks or gloves, when you only have one of the two matching items it can be quite a downer. you can’t just wear one earring. or leave the house with only one sock. thats not okay. you searched the house and car and everywhere else imaginable when you first lost it but it never turned up. however, you kept the lone item just in case you randomly find it. now, weeks or months down the road, you come across it. the feeling is exhilarating. you find it behind the drawer or stuffed into a corner or put in a random box that was sealed up. now you can get out that lone item from storage and start to re-wear the goods. awesome.

  22. getting a package that wasnt supposed to arrive for another couple days early

    you wait and wait and wait. count down the days or weeks until something is supposed to arrive. you have come to terms that it wont arrive til next week. you check the mail anyways. just in case. and wait. there it is. waiting at your door when you return home. its here. and a couple days early. awesome.

    1. I’m right there with you. Gotta be peeled so you get the proper air to cheese ratio in your mouth. tastes AWESOME!

    2. Ooh, yes. The very best when the cheese is at the perfect consistency so it pulls in nice taut thin strings, not clumpy uneven chunks…

  24. Spending the whole day after party with your friends, just eating and doing nothing. You don’t have to dress up, you don’t have to go out, you don’t have to do anything, just relax and have fun about what happened last night.

    AWESOME!

  25. Finding the exact number of seats you need (all in a row) in a packed movie theater.

    When you get there late and there are only single buffer seats left, and then you suddenly spot those 3 seats together right in the center of the theater, as if they were just waiting there for you.

    AWESOME!

    1. Even more awesome when you get “socially optimal” seating (http://xkcd.com/173/)–couples get seated together, acrimonious exes are well spaced apart, people who just met tonight are seated on either side of the mutual friend who can facilitate conversation…

  27. After a two-day fast, clicking on this website on a Monday morning and getting another awesome thing to smile at!

  28. Going through your closet with reckless abandon, throwing old clothes into your charity box to donate. Feeling good about your givingness, feeling good about the extra space in your closet. Looking forward to filling it up with new, better stuff. And if that new better stuff happens to come from GoodWill, then you’ve come full circle and it’s double AWESOME!

  29. After you’ve been a nervous wreck at a new job for a couple weeks, or a month or two, then one day it finally clicks. You stop asking all those dumb questions and you start feeling useful! AWESOME!

  30. Winning a game of chicken with your alarm clock. You know what I mean. You wake up before your alarm clock goes off, but it’s early enough that you can get a few more minutes of shut eye, then perhaps a few more, but just before that clock is about to turn over to that dreaded wake-up-to-annoying-noise time, you wake up, spring out of bed, and turn off the evil machine before it has a chance to ruin your early morning peace.

    AWESOME!

  31. I love seeing mountains backlight with sunlight. You can see all the various layers of hills and valleys delineated with a kind of haze that makes them far more multi-dimensional than usual. It’s awesome!

  33. When I started reading 1000 Awesome Things I realized just how much it brightened my day to read about those perfect little moments that make life better, even in the smallest way. I started my own list of little things that make me happy in my everyday life. So I’ll leave a couple in the hopes that they make everyone else as happy as they make me.

    When you wake up to the sunshine streaming in your window, like a perfectly lit scene out of a movie.

  34. – Having an “Exactly Moment” with someone you’ve just met. You know the feeling you get when you’re talking to someone you don’t know well and you’re giving your opinion on something you really care about (say, your favorite band of all time) and they get this look in their eyes and say “EXACTLY! I know exactly what you mean!” It’s awesome.

  35. Licking the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone, or pushing all the ice cream down into the cone so you won’t end up with a hollow piece of cone at the end.

  36. When a photograph you took without thinking much of it turns out to be absolutely beautiful, or when a photograph you were really excited about looks just as good as you imagined.

  37. (Hi Anthony!) =D

    A hug from your guy/girl while you’re saying goodbye.

    You’ve been hanging out, you were at a party or you ran into each other somewhere. You come to that dreaded moment where one of you decides that you need to leave, and thus say goodbye. You reluctantly exchange this information, and then it hits you that you are about to experience one of your favorite things in the entire world….their hug.
    Suddenly, saying goodbye has an upside…especially when you muster up the strength to pull away from them, and you realize that they still don’t, they need to hold you still. And it gets waaay more awesome if they whisper in your ear “I don’t want to leave you.”
    Suddenly, life is such a web of forlorn beauty and tragic passions and sweet love.

  38. Driving around in nice weather with the car windows rolled down, resting your arm on the window sill, and feeling the breeze blow past you.

  39. It’s awesome when you wake up in the night, have no idea what time it is. Then you check up the clock and realize that it is 3 hours left untill your alarm clock rings.

    That makes my day before I even get up! Awesome!

  40. Getting your senior pictures back after dreaming about them your entire life, and realizing they are waaaayy more beautiful/amazing/incredible/breathtaking/studly than you ever expected they would be… and you can’t WAIT to show them off to every single person who comes to your grad party! =D

  41. In elementary or high school, when you walked into a class where you disliked the teacher only to find a supply teacher instead.

  42. #549 could also be

    Knowing the answer on a trivia game show (jeopardy, cash cab, etc) before the participant arrives at the answer ( if even do, if they don’t then double bonus)

  43. Having the place to yourself

    Let’s face it- who doesn’t need a break from the roommate, suitemate, housemate- whoever. and BAM like a lucky day there’s spring break and all the rest are going home. So don’t look at the abandonment side- look at the I can take long showers and blast music and sing at the top of my lungs and sit around in whatever the hell kind of clothes I want to (or even none at all.. I mean hey.. the place is your oyster.) I can leave dishes around, leave my shoes all over the place, break out the guitar or boombox or tv and let sound fill every corner without a single worry of distracting someone else. I can take a look around at the place, and say ‘This is MY town.’

    so awesome.

  44. Literary devices:

    Personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, etc. It makes writing and reading so much more fun. Our own Neil uses these tools turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

    Compare these facebook statuses:

    “I ate a poppyseed muffin and it gave me a terrible stomach ache” with
    “Dear poppyseed muffin, you gave me a terrible stomach ache.”

    That just oozes of awesomeness!

    AWESOME!

  45. I have a strange fascination with sandwiches but for me, one of the best possible things is making a completely flawless sandwich. Bread perfectly toasted, mayo evenly spread, bacon just crispy enough, freshly sliced tomato. Nothing falling out, everything sitting perfectly and tasting even more delicious than it looks.

  46. Slides. Let’s face it slides are just awesome. And when we reach the age where it looks inappropriate to go down slides, I think we all just want to go down slides even more.

    1. or swings … something about the freedom to just keep going with the wind in your hair and reminding you of childhood.

  47. Reading through the other comments on your new favorite website, and seeing that someone actually spoke directly to you.

    You read it, amused and half-minded. Then, as you start to read the next comment, it hits you… that was your name! You scroll back up as fast as possible, possibly going way too far…. when you get back to it, you read it with curiosity and excitement, feeling as though the Internet is nto a wasteland of impersonal comment pages…. no… someone has reached through the madness and decided to extend a hand of friendship, however small or insignificant the comment! =)

    1. Kate – that’s a truly awesome moment.. It’s happened to me once or twice on this blog, and I love it every single time! My reaction is exactly as you described.

  48. Laughing louder at a movie than everyone else in the theatre because no one else got the subtle joke. Everyone else thinks you’re crazy but you feel like it is a secret message between you and the producer(or director, or screenwriter, or actor).

    1. Sometimes I feel like such an elitist when this happens to me but there is no denying it is enjoyable!

  50. Being read aloud too. Some books are better when they’re read aloud, and not much makes you feel more pampered. Awesome!

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