On days where a field trip is required I always find a new dress in my closet.<\/p>\n
Treasure will be found if you only get off your couch and dig for it beneath the cushions. 5 17 18 24 93<\/i><\/p>\n
It was an oddly specific fortune cookie. But when one of the kids in my classroom gets an oddly specific fortune with their chow mein, it can only mean that it\u2019s field trip day. The dress covered in springs and couch pillows makes sense now.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome on, kids! Everyone aboard the bus!\u201d<\/p>\n
No one ever asked about the bus. Not the school board. Not the administration. Not the other bus drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot another field trip.\u201d
\n\u201cI thought we were going to learn long division this week.\u201d
\n\u201cNot again, Mrs. Frizzle,\u201d the children whined.<\/p>\n
\u201cHup to, hup to. Learning requires sacrifices from time to time,\u201d I said, clapping my hands together.<\/p>\n
The kids dutifully filed out to the bus and took their seats. The bus winked a headlight on me as I boarded behind them. I dropped into the driver\u2019s seat and starting cranking things like I had any idea what I was doing.<\/p>\n
The bus knew the way, though. The bus always knew the way.<\/p>\n
She took off like a flash and I whooped and laughed as we rose into the sky. In two shakes we were outside of Arnold\u2019s house. Of course it was Arnold, this time. Arnold hated the field trips more than the other kids. The bus always planned something special for those kids who didn\u2019t appreciate her offerings.<\/p>\n
We bounced against the window like a butterfly and held on tight while the bus shook it off. I laughed as the bus stretched and pulled, looking for the right size to get through the opened window \u2013 for the children\u2019s sake more than my own. Inside, my stomach flopped over two or three times as my molecules were stretched and squashed back and forth before the bus settled on the right size for me.<\/p>\n
Arnold\u2019s house was pristine as we swooped over the beige living room carpet, past his mustachioed father with the red hair \u2013 sound asleep in an arm chair \u2013 and dove between two beige couch cushions. What treasure we could possibly find down here, I had no idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what we call strata,\u201d I announced as the bus sunk deeper into the couch.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike the layers in the earth,\u201d Arnold said.<\/p>\n
The sides of the couch cushions boxed us in on either side as we held our collective breath to see what we\u2019d find on the bottom. The bus bounced lightly on the springs on the couch before coming to a stop. I waited a beat to see if it was done before letting the kids run loose.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome to Arnold\u2019s couch.\u201d I pulled the lever to open the doors and the kids spilled out, bouncing slightly on the uneven ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like walking on the moon,\u201d Liz said, letting one of the springs push her up into the sky and tumbling back to the surface. The other kids picked up on it quickly, giggling from the sky as they somersaulted and ran into each other in the sky.<\/p>\n
All except for Arnold, who\u2019d found the broken spring of course. His just cast him into the bottom of the couch harder.<\/p>\n
\u201cOuch. No wonder my dad is always complaining that this couch isn\u2019t comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couch had been vacuumed recently and there were no treasures to be found at this level. The bus beckoned. \u201cAlright kids! Everybody aboard. It\u2019s time to go deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnold disengaged himself from the broken spring while the other kids shot themselves into the bus easily. The bus got a rolling, bouncing start before it hit a spring springy enough to shoot us back into the air. It flew straight up towards the cushion above us before performing a little loop de loop. She dropped us down in the crevice between the arm of the couch and the springs. As we dropped down, Arnold gave a strangled cry looking out the window.<\/p>\n
I looked out. Beside us was a black slab covered in round buttons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where the remote went!\u201d Arnold shouted. \u201cIt must have slid down here when I knocked it off the arm of the couch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well look at that. He found his treasure. And the kids would all be a good deal more likely to look for missing things here in the future. We slid past it without retrieving it. The bus only showed us things that could be retrieved once we got home in our regular size. We rarely had the chance to fix things during the field trips, themselves.<\/p>\n
As we traveled, the fibers in the couch grew larger and larger. We were shrinking. I hated shrinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere we go kids!\u201d I kept my voice cheery. For them. \u201cYou\u2019re going to get a chance to look at your furniture in a way no one else ever has.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interlocked springs hovered in a structure above our heads when the bus landed. The fabric beneath our feet was soft, weak. Arthur tore right through it, his leg dangling awkwardly out of the bottom of the couch. I wondered what would happen if he fell through altogether, whether the fall to the carpet would kill him at this size or if the bus would save him.<\/p>\n
The rest of the fabric held, though, and he managed to pull himself free. He rolled away from the group a bit due to a sag in the old fabric. The other kids waved and laughed as he dusted himself off.<\/p>\n
I waved back at him. But I didn\u2019t laugh.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d disturbed them. Dust mites. Swarming out of the couch around us, each one with a body three or four times our size now that the bus had shrunk us.<\/p>\n
We were too far away to help Arthur.<\/p>\n
The kids watched in stone-faced silence while I narrated. \u201cThose are dust mites, kids! Tiny, almost microscopic organisms that live everywhere that humans do. Some of you might even have some very tiny ones on you right now. Haha!\u201d<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cDust mites eat dust,\u201d I continued. \u201cTo me more specific, dust mites eat the tiny bits of organic material found in dust. Bits of plant matter. Tiny little flakes of hair. And skin. Lots and lots of dead skin particles.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t keep my voice cheery as we watched the mites descend on Arthur. Learning requires sacrifice, and the bus requires blood to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On days where a field trip is required I always find a new dress in my closet. Treasure will be found if you only get off your couch and dig for it beneath the cushions. 5 17 18 24 93 It was an oddly specific fortune cookie. But when one of the kids in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[225,422],"class_list":["post-11086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-couch-cushions","tag-flash-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}