Field Trip-Day: I'm a Nervous Wreck!!!!

Posted by Vulnadia on Dec 04, 2009 at 07:38 AM Of all the days it would pick to try and snow, it HAD to be this one. Today, Bregon has a huge nearly all day field trip to Natchitoches to some Christmas Concert with his piano class. It's a BUS TRIP. We don't do bus trips in our family, well at least not well, not anymore. Ever since that horrible accident in July that took the life of his best friend EVER, Bregon has been terrified of having to go ANYWHERE on a bus. He also has this horrible fear that if any of his friends have to go anywhere on a bus, that they won't come back. He is petrified of even having to FOLLOW the bus that would take them to the Junior Olympics and the Nationals should he qualify (and he most likely will qualify.) It's not enough that his Daddy will drive him and follow everyone over, he is afraid of having to watch something happen to that bus possibly, too, and with good reason, poor kid. He tenses up whenever anyone even talks about chartering a bus. He even worries that school busses aren't even safe. I don't know what to tell him, I really don't. In order to convince him that it was okay to go on THIS trip, I had to tell him about what happened to my sister when she was in high school. She was very VERY fortunate. This is going to sound odd, but she was in a bus accident while on a field trip to the port. Their bus had a stretched governor apparently, and had been speeding. An 18 wheeler, actually 2 of them, noticed the that the bus was speeding very very fast, and tried to slow them down. It just made the bus go faster. Eventually, the bus flipped over and slid down the Loop, injuring a LOT of the students on board. Sister was 5 months pregnant with my niece at the time, but came out of the accident without any injuries at all. The moral of this story for Bregon's sake is that, NOBODY DIED in the accident. NOBODY got thrown out of any of the windows and there were NO seatbelts in buses back then, at least not here. That accident happened during mild weather and the windows had been down to add to the story a bit. But, ultimately, the injuries were not life threatening therefor School Busses MUST BE SAFER. I know it sounds strange, but I had to use SOMETHING to convince him it was going to be okay to go on this trip. We even watched "What About Bob" the other night to help him prepare to "Baby step" through all of this (with a sense of humor of course!) But no matter how much we try and prepare ourselves, no matter how psyched he is for this trip, the weather is NOT helping us out here much. Normally we would LOVE a snow day, or the potential for having one, but not today, NO! This possibility of bad weather is not helping us out here AT ALL! We are both petrified. Not even my telling him how we drove back from NYC in the blizzard on a chartered bus (actually 2 of them) in high school with a Cuban bus driver and the other one being from New Orleans, neither place ever sees snow, helped him out this morning. We made it without any accident back then and it was THAT kind of bus.... So, today, we both are nervous wrecks about all of this, PLEASE no pun intended... I won't be able to breathe easy until my kiddo is back home, safe and sound with me. Until then, I will keep a vigilant eye on the news, the papers, and my cellphone to watch for his call. And I will hope that everything turns out okay. Until then, I'm a nervous wreck!