Retreat!

Each year, my son’s and my daughter’s classes go on an overnight retreat.

And for both of my kids, there was, or will be, a multi-day trip to Washington, DC for their eighth grade class.

The teachers who organize and go on these retreats and trips seem really enthusiastic and happy about them.

Are they out of their minds?

There isn’t enough money in the world to get me to ride herd on a bunch of over-excited teenagers, particularly on some kind of multi-day, low-budget, whirlwind trip, which more often than not involves riding on a school bus and sleeping in sleeping bags.

When the teachers give their presentations to the parents about how GREAT the trip is going to be, I’m thinking, “You poor bastards.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love my own teens. I like their friends.

But the pent-up energy. The complaints. The tears. (Someone will cry.) The kid – and generally there’s more than one – who’s determined to be a pain in the ass and break the rules. (A principal once told me the advice she gives to her new teachers: “There’s going to be a leader in that classroom. Make sure it’s you.”) Generally, those are the kids who will intimate that they’ll be complaining to their parents, whom you can’t help but suspect are the ones who taught the kid to be such a pain in the ass in the first place.

Oh, hell no.