Thanks for coming back

My daughter went on a field trip last week, and it got me to thinking. Why don’t adults get field trips?

You remember them – those days you waited weeks, even months for. You’d be gone from class most of the day, with your friends, doing something fun. No schoolbooks, no tests, and you might even learn something.

Often it was to a museum or a performance of some type of motivational group for kids. But sometimes – the really good times- it was to someplace fun. For my daughter, it was Soak City.

Soak City is a waterpark, with the slides and the wave pools and the lazy rivers you can float on. She spent the better part of the day there. Got a heck of a tan too!

So why don’t we get those days? Why can’t we get a field trip. We work hard, we do what we have to do as responsible adults. We should get to have a day to goof off too!

So, we have launched International (shoot for the moon, I say..) Grownup Field Trip Day. The idea is simple. Take the day off from work, preferably with friends, and make a day of it doing something fun and silly. Go to a water park, head to the beach, visit an amusement park.

But the key is- you have to treat it like a field trip. Get everyone in matching t-shirts. Carpool, or even better, get a bus! Stick together as a group and have fun as a group.

Our first International Grownup Field Trip Day is slated for August 20th – but it’s still flexible. You can sign up for updates on Facebook, just search under Groups for International Grownup Field Trip Day.

While you may not be able to attend the specific event we are planning, try to plan your own on the same day. Get your friends together for a good time. But remember, this is GROWNUP field trip day. Taking the kids is missing the point. We all love our kids, but this is intended to be a day away from work, away from our own kids, so we can be a kid ourselves for awhile. Do something goofy and make a day of it. Get Grandma to watch the kids, or send them off to a friend’s house for the day. This field trip is for you!

You know, it’s important to get yourself away every once in a while, to go out and be a kid again. We get so caught up in our day to day grind that we forget some of the simple joys of being a kid. Like a chocolate dipped ice cream cone on a hot summer day. Water balloon fights. Just hanging out under a shady tree. All the kinds of things we used to do as kids. These are all all things we can still do as adults, but never seem to get back to. And I think we’re worse off for that.

On one hand, we miss out on those joys and an opportunity to lift our spirits and feel good. And we all deserve that. Nowadays, life is a test, and sometimes when you’re getting ready for a test, you need to take a break. Just getting out and doing something silly, something fun, something out of the ordinary from our daily lives lets our psyches recharge a little. And that recharge keeps us a little more sane when we get back to the grind.

We also get to build more memories. As the saying goes, you never hear someone say on their death bed that they wish they had just worked a few more hours of overtime. WE need to have those other experiences as a balance in our lives, and to strengthen the bonds to our friends. It’s just plain healthier.

But I think there’s another aspect that’s just as important for those of us that are parents – playing like a kid lets us remember what it was like – so we can make sure our kids get to do it too.

At lunch today the conversation turned to kids and how they are almost forced to grow up too quickly. I’ve seen 7-year-olds – same age as my daughter, with cellphones. Really? I mean, the school has a phone if I need to get hold of my daughter, and if there’s a problem they can get hold of me. Where exactly is my daughter going to be that she needs a cellphone? Does the kid really need to be able to text before they hit 2nd grade? Most kids are still learning to spell and instead they’re using text-speak. They start using sentences like “R U gng 2 D fair?”. I’d like to hear from teachers how many kids are using text-speak in essays or written answers.

Another example came out of the teen survey we did a couple of weeks ago. We asked what the biggest issues for teens are today. In retrospect, this wasn’t worded quite right. We got responses from teens, but we also got them from adults, who wanted to tell us what THEY thought should be important to teens. These included the socialist downfall of the US, the soaring deficit, and liberties being taken away.

This is what adults wanted teens to be focusing on. Any wonder these kids look at us like we’re fungos? The biggest issues to these teens are the same things that were issues to us – appearance, sex, money, family, fitting in. And yet, some have parents that want to make sure their kids are prepared to defend themselves against the onslaught of institutionalized socialism – like the kids are gonna care.

And that’s why I think it’s important for us old fogies to go out and be kids every once in a while. We need to remember what it was like so we don’t try to shove kids forward into adulthood before their time. Life is gonna slap them in the face soon enough. We need to give them the time to just be kids.

So, here’s an official invitation to join us, whether physically, in your own area, or just in spirit, on International Grownup Field Trip Day, August 20th 2010. Join the group on Facebook and chime in as what you’d like to do. We also invite you to drop a comment in and let us know what you think would make a great Grownup Field Trip and what fun things you’d like to do.

And if you do celebrate it, we want to hear what you did! Upload pics, spill dirt – we want to know what kind of fun you had. If it’s a good one, we’ll do another – and another. So be sure to snap lots of shots, plenty of video, and send them to us – we’d love to see them.

And yes, we’ll be issuing permission slips soon.

We’ll be right back.