A Day in the Old West

Ah, yes.. So, today was our annual field trip to Knott's Berry Farm. They have a neat program where they provide docents for school kids and take them through some of the historical reproductions associated with the Gold Rush and Westward Movement. It's a day my students look forward to all year.

Our docent, let's call him D, made our day extra special. I had D as a docent several years ago so I knew what we were in for. After the last tour with D I had written a note to the program director commenting on some of D's inappropriate behaviors, so I was hopeful that he'd toned it down since then. Let's just say that D is flamboyent, a really nice guy, but he has no "filter". When you work with children, you have to have a filter - you can't just say anything...

D's first inappropriate action was to show us a picture on his cell phone (yeah, they had those in the Old West) of Richard Simmons and himself - he referred to it as his wedding picture. Turns out he knows Richard well... Okay, so then we hear all about his gastric bypass surgery and how he's tried to get on Extreme Makeover, Dr. Phil, and Oprah to have them pay for his next surgery, which is required to remove his extra skin. He tells us it's a $50k surgery. I swear he was fishing for donations! He has some dubious Hollywood "connections" so he name drops shamelessly all day long.

He tells the students that he has a myspace.com page and that they should "check it out"! Hello, do you watch the news, mister? Myspace.com isn't exactly appropriate for fourth graders!

I spent most of the day just shaking my head at his inability to accurately judge the group of people he was relating to. These are children! Install your filter!