Field Trip

Today I went on a field trip with my daughter's kindergarten class. Fall is upon us and the time has come once again to visit a “real, working farm”--which apparently means the kids can't touch anything--including vegetables or animals--as yellow-vested retirees mumble into walkie-talkies and herd the kids from station to station: caged rabbits, caged chickens, and a vegetable patch where they "stand on the hay, please! And don't trample the carrots!"

“This is so boring,” my daughter declared, and I had to agree. The whole point of visiting the “country” is to feel free, to run with the chickens, get your hands dirty, pull a carrot out of the ground, hold rabbits, maybe even get nipped by a pig without fear of a lawsuit.

I tried to explain that farmers have to eke out a living somehow, and with their livelihood at stake, cramming as many busloads of five-year-olds as possible into their hay maze and overpriced market makes a lot of sense.

But it was lost on her.

What my daughter did notice was her best friend's beautiful little bento lunch. Her best friend's mom happens to be Japanese—as in, recently moved here from Tokyo, and her mothering skills put me to shame. I'd thought the lunch I had carefully made the night before for my kids – delicious chicken salad sandwiches featuring grapes, walnuts and no mayo, which they hate (instead, Greek yogurt, a brilliant fix!) now looked totally blah next to the carrot slices cut into jack-o'-lantern shapes and Hello Kitty-shaped nori stuck onto perfect little rice balls dyed pink with food coloring. This was some hardcore housewifery -- not even those Stepford bitches could touch that shit.

But in the end, no one ate, as we were in a barn that was overtaken with flies (turned out we were seated near cat litter.) But the perfectionism battle really went out the window when one little boy declared he had no lunch. Several moms and the teacher quickly scrambled to give him some food, and the first thing that reached his hands was a giant apple.

"Apples are my favorite!" he said, bursting with enthusiasm, and took a big, juicy bite.