Tell This Guy To Take A Hike (And Walk The Opposite Way)
My grade went on a field trip to a national park. We were split into several groups, each supervised by a different adult. Most of these groups managed to follow their assigned trails, break for lunch, and get back to the buses within the assigned time frame.
Not my group. Things started going wrong immediately. Our adult let us vote on which path to take, and we chose the longest hiking route — one that simple math showed would be impossible to complete before pick-up time. Not that anyone listened to me trying to point it out.
Then, a few kilometers in, we took a wrong turn. I’ve hiked before, and I was familiar with the path markers. The adult in charge was not. I tried to tell him it was the wrong route, but he didn’t want to listen to a little girl.
The new route we were on did not circle back to the parking lot at all.
Our adult did, at some point, figure out that something was wrong. Unfortunately, his solution was twofold: he refused to let us stop for a lunch break, and he took us off of the marked paths.
I tried to tell him that we should either sit and wait until rescued or turn around and follow the path back, and that eating lunch would help us feel and think better. I think that made him more convinced his idea was correct. He did not like the idea of listening to a little girl.
Long story short, the sun was starting to set when the park rangers found us and led us out of the park.
The kicker is that our group’s adult wasn’t a teacher and didn’t have any wilderness or educational training. He was the adult layabout son of the vice principal and had been voluntold to lead a group. He’d mismanaged other events for the school in the past, but none to this extent.
I don’t know what punishment he suffered as a result of his repeated mistakes (I cheerfully told the park rangers everything he did wrong as we were walking back), but he never showed up to participate in a school event again.