People watching in NYC is a favorite pastime for tourists and out-of-town conventioneers.
This trip, the best people watching has occurred in my hotel, the staging area for a gaggle of 12- and 13-year-old 30 model UN delegates and their harried teacher/coach/sponsor and parent chaperones.
Yesterday afternoon I entered the hotel lobby just as the group returned from a day of sightseeing. The kids were mobbing their teacher clamoring for hotel room keys and declaring they were going to run up the 11 flights of stairs rather than wait on the only operating elevator.
After the youngsters stampeded to the stairwell, the teacher, clutching 20 room keys explained that the group had checked into the hotel earlier and had dumped all their luggage in one room. Problem was, he couldn’t remember which room on the 11th floor.
Pulling out his smart phone, he said that the group had walked over nine miles that day.He couldn’t believe they had the energy for the stairway race.
After a quick change of clothes for dinner, I returned to my fourth-floor elevator bank to find a sweaty, breathless delegate who declared that he was not going to run up the remaining stairs. He was done.
So, apparently were other kids, on each floor all the way to the 11th floor. The wait for the down elevator was considerable, as the up elevator stopped on each floor to pick up more weary delegates before proceeding to the 21st floor. Then, the elevator had to stop on every floor on the way down to pick up hotel guests who had been waiting to go down.
(If you want to know why I didn’t just walk down, this out-of-shape old gal was tired. Those brisk walks from our convention site, to the subway with three train changes, then another three-block hike from Grand Central Station in business flast left my feet sore.
This morning, I arrived at the dining area at the same time as the coach and ahead of the delegation, most of whom appeared in their pajamas and barefoot only to be told to go back to their rooms and put on their shoes. (PJs apparently were okay.)
Fellow conventioneers on higher levels of the hotel reported difficulty sleeping with excited hormonal tweens racing and yelling up and down hallways and up and down the stairwell.
This afternoon, I spotted the coach when I returned and asked how the day had gone. He didn’t look as tired as the afternoon before. He reported that he managed to get the delegation back to the hotel without losing anyone.
When I returned from dinner, about a dozen delegates were in the hotel lobby, along with a laundry cart of towels and a patient, pleasant, but clearly annoyed hotel staff member chastising the kids for using the cart as a toy. Apparently they had discovered the cart on one of the floors and decided it would be an excellent mode of transportation. Their plans were disrupted when they charged out of the elevator in front of the registration desk.
The staffer tried to make the incident a teachable moment by telling the kids that the towels would have to be rewashed, which meant extra work for the housekeepers, and that the cart was not a toy and the leading culprit could have been hurt.
His response, “Hey, can I get back in so he (a classmate) can take a picture?”
“Ask her,” the staff member nodding to a girl who was filming the incident for posterity. “She’s got the video.”
God bless teachers, coaches, sponsors and chaperones. They have dual burdens of trying to keep kids from injuring or killing themselves while trying to protect the reputation of their school or team. If you’re lucky, you never find out about the crazy things the kids are doing or have done. Otherwise you would resign your post immediately.
One time when we were taking one of our son’s friend along to an out-of-town selects occer tournament, we entered their room just as the friend leapt from a small divider trying to do a flip and landing on the bed. Our entrance startled him in midflight and we’re lucky he didn’t miss the bed and knock himself out — and out of the tournament.
Thinking back to my high school years, I recall a trip to Denton, Texas where the high school journalism team was competing in various events sponsored by the University Interscholastic League. (Geek alert: I was competing in the headline writing category.)
My girlfriends and I had purchased waterguns and were going door to door at the motel shooting our male classmates. When they gave chase, we ran about the motel and parking lot shrieking. I imagine our antics were not appreciated by non-journalism guests.
So, as a kid or as a chaperone, what shenanigans did you engage in while on a road trip with a school group or outside group? True confessions time!
Blue OUtpost 