Disney Lowlights

April 9, 2009

Since feedback would suggest nobody's reading these posts, let me get to the crapola part of the trip and then get back to your regularly scheduled programming, ie., me analyzing belly button fluff.

--one of my group's kids had a panic attack. Apparently there's a love triangle aspect to that. He's got a girlfriend at home (or did), but he was sniffing around another girl, who was hanging with a friend, and another guy was also sniffing around her, and when they weren't paying sufficient attention to him, he got to hyperventilating and ended up in the infirmary. Oh, the drama (Because, after all, chicks dig needy men--snort). I don't doubt the panic attack was, er, real, but the band directors weren't too fussed about it because apparently they've seen it before--about three times a week.

--one of my kids, unfortunately, got to rough-housing and fooling around with friends and did a face-plant on the pavement. His parents were on the trip, but we were pretty worried about him. He finally ended up at the Emergency Room and was diagnosed with a small concussion. He's fine. I suggested we get a T-shirt made up for him that said, "I Went To Disney World But All I Got Was This Stupid Concussion."

--The concussion kid's grandmother was on the trip. She's great. She's 82, clear as a bell, and hell, she was riding the roller coasters. Unfortunately, we had made it back to Detroit and were walking to the bus and she stepped off the curb wrong and fell and broke her nose. She's fine, as it turns out, but it scared the hell out of us. She spent some time at the ER with one of the chaperones and my wife talked to her son the next day and although she looks like she went a couple rounds with Mike Tyson, she's fine (Thank God).

--One of the kids got pulled out by security because she was carrying a snow globe in her luggage. TSA treated her like a terrorist, didn't say anything to any of the chaperones or even see if she was traveling with an adult. They grabbed her out of line and walked away. When we asked the TSA what was going on, they said, "We don't know." TSA--bad, you handled this wrong. They x-rayed it and then took her to a place where she could mail it home. Meanwhile, she's the girl the two guys were sniffing around, and our DQ went off on another panic attack because "he wasn't there for her in her time of need." A calming talk and a placebo took care of that.

Aside from that, there was just the usual: Larry, Darryl and Darryl got in a fistfight over something, but worked it out over a 10-pound bag of M&Ms; half the kids hated each other and broke off into other groups, then back again, over and over again, apparently working it out over fast passes or Gummy Bears or something. Lots of drama, some small incidences, but otherwise everything worked out fine and in retrospect was a great trip.

Cheers,

Mark