Attending the World Dairy Expo is like going to the zoo—except there’s only one animal, and it’s an animal with no entertainment value: the cow. The event is basically a big mixer for cows and humans. I’m about to embark on my third journey to the World Dairy Expo, traveling from Ripon to Madison in a bus, as a chaperone on a field trip. I’m on the special education support staff at the high school, and I keep getting wrangled into this experience by the FFA Club. I sheepishly try to get out of the ol’ prelude to the slaughterhouse, but the Future Farmers of America keep roping me back in.
Actually, it’s not exactly that bad. Once we make it to the Alliant Energy Center, we get treated to plenty of exercise and fresh air—only the cardio walks take us from one cow to another, and the fresh air is polluted by their farts. Did I mention the cattle also pees and craps nonstop without doing anything interesting?
If I may rally my attitude for real this time, I do like some aspects of the trip. The science teacher and head of FFA is a likeable young man named Mr. Phillips. I’ve been involved with his Wildlife Conservation class in multiple semesters as a sort of educational co-pilot, albeit a co-pilot with little knowledge in the field. Mr. Phillips and I get along even though we don’t have much in common. He side-hustles as a dairy farmer and stocks trader. My side hustles are sub custodian at the school and continental breakfast guy at Cobblestone Suites. Mr. Phillips has a chess grading of about 1700, and he said that means he’s ranked at the Expert level, and he’s won chess tournaments with payouts in the four-figure range. One time I got beat in chess by Damon, a favorite kid of mine with an I.E.P. I’m pretty sure I’m only like 3-1 against Damon, putting me somewhat shy of the 1700 level, I’d imagine. Mr. Phillips has a swoosh of short blond hair slicked sideways and a mustache with chin stubble. I look like the bony cousin of Bigfoot, who clawed a small hole out of my scalp, with my bushy brown beard, bald spot, and flannels.
Besides our careers in education and allegiance to the Green Bay Packers, there’s not a lot in the center of the Venn Diagram between us. Mr. Shawn P. had this day circled on his calendar with anticipation. Whereas I came close to circling it on my calendar by using it as my one Personal Day.
As I write this, it’s 7:42 a.m. I’m surrounded by dozens of teens corralled in something called the foods science lab. We’ve had a few rowdy outbursts and I’ve raised my voice twice.
“White sweatshirt! Enough with the sleeper hold!” I snapped at one point.
The bus is not on time. The wait is getting too long and we’re getting restless. White Sweatshirt is not my favorite student, but White Sweatshirt is inevitable when the wait has no end in sight.
Mr. Phillips just made an announcement about permission slips at the other end of the lab. We’re on opposite sides of the Diagram with kids in between.
The bus is running late. It’s 7:50 and we are waiting indefinitely. My least favorite type of waiting.
###
It’s 8:16 and we’re leaving Ripon city limits. The bus is so crowded that some seats are packed with 3 kids. The maximum capacity sign is a liar. A few kids have to crouch in the aisle. We know the problem and we don’t have the resources to solve it. Public education!
I told the student beside me that at least it’s a sunny morning in the fall morning in the beautiful state of Wisconsin, and that after the long, long wait for the bus to arrive, I bet the worst part of the day is over. She’s a nice kid who gave me no reply.
I’m listening to The Beatles “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and enjoying the scenery. I’m seeing so many cornfields, silos, and tree leaves starting to flirt with autumn colors. We pass over a bridge leaving Markisan behind with me bopping my head to “Taxman” on earbuds.
During this calm reprieve, I’ll tell you about the time Mr. Phillips and I shared a ride to a Brewers home game and back, with me behind the wheel. The head custodian at the high school set up a staff trip to the ballpark in Milwaukee. About 15 of us met in the parking lot to have an awkward group talk about carpooling. I didn’t want to seem like a mooch, so I volunteered to drive. I ended up doing just that, which wasn’t great, either. Mr. Phillips was the only one who rode with me. We got to know each other better on the 90-minute drives there and back, on top of tailgating with 2 beers apiece in the parking lot.
On our way to the Brewers/ Twins game, Mr. Phillips noted the sleeve of CDs tucked above the sun visor on the passengers’ seat.
“It’s not everyday that I see CDs,” he said.
“Sure. So you’re like, ‘Whoa, See deese CDs?!’” I said. “I grew up in that era. I used to have, like, 400 or 500? I don’t know—a lot. It took me a while to downsize, so now I’m down to 100 or so.”
Mr. Phillips gazed at the discs, sleeve in hand now, nodding slowly.
“CDs were sort of fading out when I got to a certain age,” he said. “So, I only ever owned two. They were… What were they? Oh! The Dixie Chicks Fly and a greatest hits by George Jones.”
“Ooh, you’re not gonna find either one of those, I’m afraid,” I said. “Pick one to play! Actually, you might really like the Gram Parsons album…”
“I’ll go with Nirvana Insecticide,” he said. “Because insecticide relates to agriculture.”
“Good pick!” I said, not having the heart to correct him. As proof of Kurt Cobain’s wordplay and twisted sense of humor, the album was actually titled Incesticide.
I had enjoyed the Brewers falling to the Twins 3-0 on Star Wars Night more so than my first 2 trips to the World Dairy Expo. It’s 9:04 a.m. on my third journey and the calm has gone away, I’m sad to report. A rowdy bunch of boys at the back of the bus is disturbing the peace. I might have to raise my voice again. Bummer.
I have a deep, assertive voice tinged with anger when I snap at kids. Sometimes it even works. But I don’t have the physical stature or title to match the voice. Moreover, I dislike policing behavior. I’ll do it, but it’s not my favorite part of the job.
I scolded the kid in the seat in front of me. He talked back to Bella, a bright student who actually gives a bleep, after she told him to stop tossing around random school supplies across the aisle and better represent the FFA. The middle schooler attempted a second round of chiriping, which I shut down.
“Shut your mouth and listen to Bella!” I snapped. That did the trick.
Five minutes later, I got the kid’s name, Duncan, and we had a good conversation. I spoke with kind assurance that I didn’t necessarily hate him. The kid had a Slushy machine stand with his dad at the Farmer’s Market in downtown Fond du Lac over the summer. I told Duncan I was from Fond du Lac, and he sounded like a regular entrepreneur with that Slushy stand at the Farmer’s Market.
It’s 10:12. At some point, we got off the bus. Cow manure, everywhere. The manure is the worst in the parking lot. I’m with a small group of kids, some of whom I just met. We’ve got second row seats to look at the cows. The air-conditioning feels nice. I don’t like this experience. The Best Utters Award just went to Miss Reagan E.T. You know what? That’s actually pretty great.
The announcer is an incredibly fluid speaker. He might also be a judge. He’s a master on the mic and very knowledgeable, but I just don’t care about his expertise.
I had to stop writing in my notebook at that point. I didn’t get a chance to write again the rest of the school day, either because I had to do my job, or because I didn’t have the physical space needed to write anything on the crowded bus ride home. I had to become a version of a wandering adult leader and retire my pen.
I do recall the gist of the second half of the field trip. Just when I was really starting to savor the cow name Miss Reagan E.T., a high-school boy pointed out that what we were watching was boring.
“Boring?” I said. “Well, that’s your opinion, Kado. Do the rest of you guys feel that way?”
The 5 Ripon boys in my row turned and nodded, a few effusively.
“Alright, fine,” I said. “I guess it’s time to roam around.”
Kado stood up excitedly, extending his lanky frame.
“We can go to the booths and get answers for our packets!”
“Packets?” I said as Kado flailed a pair of papers stapled together. “Oh, that’s right—there are packets involved. Good call, Kado. You lead the way.”
Roaming proved to be the right choice. Our group went from one booth to another in the arena. Friendly reps from utter industry titans like Afimilk, ABS Global, and Pioneer Seeds US had quizzes prepared for the kids, along with mini versions of games like Plinco, Wheel of Fortune, and cornhole. The boys had to earn their keychains, fanny packs, and squishy cow fidgets with right answers, with little help in the field of agriculture from yours truly. The candy was a free enticement at most of the booths, so the boys loaded up on bags of Skittles and mini Crunch Bars.
I didn’t learn much about cattle and how to milk them and I still can’t hear the word “cropdusting” without giggling about farts, but I did remember the names of the boys—Theo, Kado, AJ, Hatcher, and Clay—and we even struck up a wisecracking rapport. Maybe I still do maintain that nutrients enrich the soil in a process known as sorcery, but my stewardship at the World Dairy Expo part 3 was at least passable.
At noon, everyone from Ripon High School reconvened at a hard-to-miss landmark outside the arena. The head-count Mr. Phillips did was fast and true. Then he got out his camera-phone and beckoned the kids to pose beside the giant, rotating globe near the picnic tables.
With the picture taken, we returned to the bus, with me reminding the kids to watch out for all the cow crap in the Godforsaken parking lot. Before we got back to Ripon, we were taking a detour to the Culver’s in Beaver Dam.
Mr. Phillips has a few traditions in his class. Shortly after the bell rings, he reads a joke from a book of soul-crushingly bad dad jokes. He concludes most classes by quoting Mr. Rogers, of Neighborhood fame, by telling the students, “Please remember that you’re important to me, and I love you just the way you are.” Mr. P is also known to ask the kids to share their “Roses and Thorns,” meaning the good and bad things they’ve experienced as of late. For instance, Bella might give to the University of Steven’s Point for accepting her application. Or Trey might give a thorn to Damon for making him gag on a silent-but-deadly release of gas in Advisory.
The next day in Mr. P’s class, I was to give a thorn to the bus ride back to school, with students nodding in agreement. If you recall the prediction I made to the kid who had no reply in the morning, I had bet that the worst part of the day was over. It wasn’t. The low point, fittingly, was on the floor.
As our group packed back into the bus, somehow every poor soul had even less personal space. In a twist of cognitive dissonance, it seemed like somehow the bus had fewer seats, and we had more students with wider butts. Did Miss Frizzle herself cast a magic spell on our oblong mode transportation, to teach us a lesson about the inverse relationship between density of bodies and comfort? Nope! Our bus driver was a bald eagle of a man with a mustache who simmered with rage and shouted at children with the vitriol of someone scalded with acid.
The bus driver had a great amount of anger for the teen who reached his hand out the window, and no sympathy for our body-mass-to-furniture ratio. Four kids had no choice but to sit on the floor at this point. I was sharing a seat with 2 students. My left butt cheek was the lucky one, whereas my right cheek was hovering twitchingly over the aisle. I felt the pain of a 43-year-old baseball catcher who was never allowed to stand. This unsupported crouch became a pain in the obvious as well as my hamstring muscles several minutes before the bus rolled mercifully into the Culver’s parking lot.
I was as cranky as our bus driver when we disembarked. Seeking some kind of an oasis from the hurt, I quickly hobbled to the front of the restaurant to make sure this Culver’s had a front patio. Adirondack chairs with marble tables and umbrellas greeted me on that warm September afternoon. I had found hope, because I sensed I could be alone and quiet and restored by sunshine, away from too many people and too much noise for a short time.
I speed-hobbled to the side entrance, where the long line of field trippers reached its end outside the glass doors of the restaurant. A junior with a mop of curly hair and a penchant for snark let out one of his reverberating belches.
“Excuse you, Mr. O.,” he said with that snark I just told you about.
I no-sold it.
“Kyler, look, I need to chill by myself on the patio. If anyone is looking for me, tell them that.”
Just as I turned to walk away, I saw Kyler nodding at me in a moment of somber understanding.
“Yeah, I got you, Mr. O,” Kyler said.
Suddenly I was proud of this belching teen as I retreated to my concrete sanctuary. I treated my frustration to fresh air, relative quiet, and the absence of people. My battery did not fully recharge, but I felt like I had restored enough to make it home.
Eventually and before it was too late, I went inside and ordered cheese curds and an Orange Crush at the counter. In a restaurant packed with our field trippers, plus a number of patrons who were not expecting to co-mingle at the ketchup pump with three-dozen teenagers, I sat at a small table with a few coworkers and students from Special Ed.
Mrs. Yarborough sensed I’d been bothered.
“You OK, Nick?” she asked.
I told her about the bus ride, then shrugged, and finished with a statement both cliched and true.
“This too shall pass,” I said.
I was the lone soul from the Special Ed. group who rode on the overcrowded bus. The others rode on the undercrowded bus. Early that morning when we were boarding, Mr. Phillips had wondered out loud over the tedious revving of the engine if we should unload a handful of our crew onto the other bus. This act of balance made sense to me, but for unknown reasons, we proceeded with imbalance. One bus was a claustrophobic’s nightmare. The other had a number of empty seats.
On the last leg of the journey, from the Culver’s in Beaver Dam to Ripon High School, we felt the clutches tighten on the claustrophobic’s nightmare.
With too many bodies, not enough seats, and perhaps even less willingness to share that precious leather, 5 or 6 students sat in the aisle, curled up in cannonball poses, gripping their knees. The bald eagle-man behind the wheel glowered in his rearview mirror. That bus driver was all scorn, no sympathy.
In solidarity with Bella, I joined her and the other outcasts on the floor. I suppose that means the aisle was clotted with a number of people that was either 6 or 7. Dammit, I hate that cosmic joke.
I spent about 40 minutes curled up with my knees just below my chin on the floor of that magic-less school bus. This brand of discomfort was easier on my hamstrings, worse on my back. I bonded a bit with Bella and a few other sardines.
“Oof, my foot wants to fall asleep,” I said. With great strain, I shifted my body weight. “No way, Lefty. If I gotta be conscious for this pain, then so do you!”
Bella flashed her pearly-white smile.
“Well, at least you don’t have to go to work right after school,” she said. “I’ll be limping around the farm like a buck with an arrow in the thigh.”
“You work on a farm?” I asked.
“A deer farm,” she said. “Rush Canyon Ranch.”
“Y’all got any 30-Point Bucks?”
“More than 30!” Bella said. “We have a 46-point buck!”
“I just said ‘30-Point Buck’ because of this old song from the ‘90s. By Da Yoopers…”
“Yeah, we know about ‘Da Tirty Point Buck,’ Mr. O!” Bella said with a laugh.
As proof, a few sardines nearby joined in the chorus of Da Yoopers’ greatest hit, singing, “Did ya see da tirty pointer/ Did ya see da tirty pointer?”
The chorus was disrupted by the wheelman, who was livid.
“DON’T REACH YOUR HAND OUT THE WINDOW!!” he snapped, turning his scowl momentarily to someone at the back of the bus.
His outburst made us all quiet and uneasy for a minute. I thought about how my dad very rarely shouted like that, but the odds were, some of the students weren’t as lucky, and we’d heard the shout of our fuming wheelman a handful of times. His rage was tiresome, at best.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure the culprit who kept teasing his forearm out the window was White Sweatshirt kid. I’d shouted at him too, and I expect many future shouts to come his way.
We entered the city limits of Ripon with my sense of humor running on fumes. Our transport rolled into the parking lot with me contemplating how loud I’d be groaning when I was finally free to stand up. I stepped off that bus wincing and limping, going straight to where I had parked my car.
I slipped into the driver’s seat and snagged a fresh T-shirt from a hanger on the passenger’s side. It was my white Nirvana shirt with a red collar. A rainbow arch shaped the top half of a smiley face with a red tongue and red X’s for dead eyes. It was 2:50 pm on the Tuesday of Homecoming week. We had only 15 minutes before the final bell, but it mattered to me to be a part of Band Shirt Day.
On my walk from the west entrance to my home base in Special Ed., I got 2 compliments about the shirt. Imagine what I could’ve achieved without the World Dairy Expo.
Our group was winding down by watching a show on the Smartboard. Quite honestly, it was The Magic School Bus. Mr. Lucas, Mrs. Yarborough and I traded bus stories. Their ride was a bit bumpy. I won at storytelling at the end of the day.
The final bell sounded. I had to have a word with Mr. Phillips at the other end of the school.
I saw him chatting with a fellow science teacher, seated on cushy lounge chairs outside of Biology.
“Hello, Mr. O,” Mr. Phillips said.
“Hey, Mr. P,” I said. “You gotta try harder than that to get me to quit.”
I don’t think this playful jab landed the way I thought it would. I’ve been told I can be passive-aggressive when I fail at humor. I knelt down to be closer to eye-level with the seated science guys.
“Look, that was way too crowded,” I continued. “The ratio of kids to seats was not good. I’m not taking this up with city hall or anything, but can we do better next time?”
“Well, it was a little crowded…”
“A little?” I cut in. “Shawn, I had to sit on the floor. I wasn’t the only one.”
The other teacher peered through his glasses, back and forth between Mr. P and I, staying impartial with his arms crossed.
“It was an experience you’ll never forget, right?”
“Yes. And we’ve got to learn from it. It’s both."
“Well, we might not have an extra 500 bucks lying around to rent another bus for the day.”
“It’s got to be safe, Shawn,” I said. “I don’t know the specifics, but it’s got to be safer than that.”
He turned his head, scratched his head, and paused.
“We’ll see,” he said.
He looked back at me with a wry smile.
“So, do you think you’ll be joining us again next year?”
I returned his wry brand of smile.
“Two words, man,” I said. “Personal Day.”
