A Class trip and the buddy system

[GuardianWolves]

Terrance is carrying along the bags he has packed for the school trip and had even brought along some of his airsoft gear because he had planned to practice some with his airsoft gear, luckily none of the teachers were checking bags on this trip, otherwise he would have a lot of explaining to the teachers if they found that stuff in one of his bags. Regardless though, he kept his stuff with him as he listened to the teacher to give them the usual speech that teachers gave before these kinds of trips, he had heard, although rather loosely that they were supposed to be grouped together in a buddy system and that they couldn't leave their buddies for anything, including using the bathroom, if this was true, it would be interesting to see how everyone was paired up, he just stood there and watched, luckily no one would be touching his stuff, he wouldn't let them.

Today he was wearing his Urban City Camo BDU pants and a plain white long sleeve t-shirt underneath his fleece black jacket that had velcro wolf patches on either arm. He just stood around while waiting for the assignment, he wondered if the teachers were gonna go around and force them to spend the whole time with the group or if they were gonna be allowed to spend time just as buddy groups? Regardless though, he would find a way to practice for when he got back to his house and was able to go to an airsoft field and play on the field with all his gear again.

[Ishigreensa]

Ruth Adams was a pretty skinny girl for someone in the fifth grade.  A lot of other kids called her bean-pole.  She had her hair wrapped up in a light pink scarf today because it was too much trouble to try to keep it neat on a trip like this.  It was so curly and, what was it they sometimes called it, frizzled, that it would take hot water, a blow dryer, and half an hour to tame it after every bath or swim.  She hoped they were going to swim?

Ruth's golden amber eyes looked around the classroom as the teacher talked about the buddies.

"Now, I don't want anyone getting left behind or any boy verse girl competitions where you all get spread out trying to race each other to one point of the climb or another, and there are also other advantages to boys and girls working together.  Boys have a lot of strength in the upper body, meaning that if a girl is about to call, a boy can easily pull her up over the cliff.  Girls have strong legs and can keep you grounded or stable when you are trying to climb a face together.  So, for those two reasons, we are pairing you up, one boy and one girl."

The teacher looked around the room and several girls' hands went up.

"If we can't separate even to use the bathroom...,"

"You can work it out, I'm sure.  You're not little kids anymore.  If you can't work it out, then there are some rest areas along the way where the whole group will rest at intervals, and you can use a toilet privately that way, but I warn you, the rest areas are pretty far apart.  You'll want to go every time we come to one if you can't work out a toilet arrangement with your partner that you are comfortable with."

Ruth frowned.

Ruth already felt nervous going to the bathroom at school sometimes, even with just girls in the washroom.  How would she ever get bold enough to try to go with a boy watching her?

"I'm passing around stuff for you to put in your bags.  These things are important to your survival out there, so keep them."

He was now passing out a trail map....

[GuardianWolves]

Terrance took a trail map and looked over it, he saw several places that were of interest to him and that he would mark when he had a chance to do so later on. They had plenty of time before they got to their final destination to be able to do this, although he still wondered whom he was gonna be paired with for the trip and hoped that there wouldn't be too awkward of a situation between them both while on this trip. He was also making sure to pay attention to the teacher so that he didn't miss anything and didn't get himself lost or anything. He just waited for the teacher to finish going through their lecture and assign them, so that they could get the trip started already, he took the thing that was important to their survival and put it into one of his bags and then continued to wait for the teacher to assign them into their pairs.

[Ishigreensa]

The teacher walked around the room handing out slips of papers with letters on them.  When he was done, he looked at the class, and smiled.

"Now, I want you all to stand up and look for the student with the same letter as you have.  Once we get our pairs settled, I'll have a park ranger come in and talk to you about mountaineering safety, and how to take care of your buddy should one of you get hurt or fall."

Ruth looked at her paper... D.

She stood up by her desk so as not to disobey the teacher, but she was really too shy to start moving around the class looking for the same letter.  She figured someone would end up without a partner after a few minutes, and that would be HER partner.

The teacher had been careful to write letters on blue papers and on pink papers, so the boys got a blue paper and the girls got a pink, so everyone would be paired as he had intended, one girl and one boy.

[GuardianWolves]

Terrance looked at his paper and saw the letter D on it and stood up and started to look around for the girl that had the same letter paper as he did and eventually he found it with a shy girl, he had found she was his partner because she had the same letter on her pink paper as he did on his blue paper and he held out his free hand to shake and introduced himself to her "Hi, I'm Terrance, it's nice to meet you, I hope we can become friends throughout this trip, what's your name?" He asked her as he stood nearby and waited to see if she would take his hand and shake his hand as well and return the greeting. He was hoping that this girl would wanna be his friend during this entire trip and maybe even until they graduated they could be friends, maybe they would even go to the same schools after graduation.

[Ishigreensa]

(I think I misunderstood, so this is a trip as an ice breaker before school even really starts?)

Ruth frowned and looked down at her shoes.  She wasn't that outgoing, so when he gave her his hand to shake, she just held it and let him shake hers.  She was a little timid because since third grade, she had been the one that everyone laughed at and made fun of....  It hadn't helped that in third grade she had pooped her pants and just the year before, she had peed on herself twice.

Luckily, she had not peed her pants for quite a few months now, and she was hoping all that was behind her.

"I--I am Ruth Adams," she said still looking at her shoes.  She would very much welcome a friend, but she didn't trust anyone that acted friendly anymore.  They always pretended to be a friend until they could get her to make a mistake, so she just kept looking at her shoe.

[GuardianWolves]

(No, but he doesn't really know her because he had been switched to her class this year.)

"It's nice to meet you Ruth. Come on, let's sit down, are you excited for the trip? I am." He said as he sat down next to her in the desk chair that was directly next to hers. He didn't know about what had happened for the last two years, because he hadn't been in her class before this, so he was relatively fresh and unaware of what Ruth was getting made fun of for. When someone did make fun of Ruth, Terrance would call them out on it and defend Ruth because he wouldn't want her to be made fun of, that's not a fun thing for anyone to go through.

[Ishigreensa]

(So he was maybe transferred just a week or two ago, and they've already been at school for a couple of months, in the fifth grade, then?)

Ruth didn't know what Terrance was going to be like, but she still didn't trust him since she didn't know him, and everyone else was always mean to her.  

"It's kind of...," she started very softly, but then stopped talking afraid that she might have disturbed him or made it hard for him to understand the teacher.  Besides, no one really wanted to talk to her, right?

The park ranger got up there, and she started to talk about the park.

"There are over 500 species of animals at the park, which also includes several kinds of poisonous snakes.  If you see a snake...."

Ruth listened intently about this.  Snakes scared her.  Of course, some of the other wild animals concerned her, too, but she was really scared she'd meet a snake out there.

[GuardianWolves]

(Yeah he got transferred in about a week ago and the class has already been in session for several months in the 5th grade.)

Soon, the lecture was over. One of the stops they were gonna be at and that they were gonna stay overnight at, was a park so they needed to know this information so that they could be safe. None of the kids wanted to be bit by a poisonous snake, or get hurt by anything out in the wild, so all of them seemed to be paying more attention, then was usual for a fifth grade class that was excited for a class trip before winter break up to a ski resort where they could have snow and some, like Terrance for instance, would be able to experience snow for the first time, since he was a foster child and still in the foster care system and the adoption home he was living in at the moment, was never able to take the kinds of trips that they were able to take whenever a class was planning them, it was nice.

[Ishigreensa]

Ruth squirmed a bit in her seat, but kept quiet.  She was getting a bit excited as they talked about the snow, and some of the dangers of being exposed without the right gear and whatever else could go wrong.

A paper plane flew to the top of her desk, and it had her name on it, so she opened it up, and read it.

Wonder how long it will take before Baby Roosee pee pees her pants on this trip.

Ruth rolled up the paper into a ball and stuffed it in her desk.  Her face turned a little red, and she squirmed a little more.

"Okay," the teacher finally said.  "Now, we will call you by your letter pairs to board two busses.  Please, as quietly and orderly as you can, walk out where the busses always park..."

[GuardianWolves]

Terrance noticed what she had gotten and despite her attempts otherwise, he had seen the stuff written on the papers and said "that's not a very nice thing to say to someone or even call someone you know? I would get mad if it were me, if I'm being honest. I'm gonna be honest that I will never ever make fun of you for having those types of things happen to you when they do happen, because you can't control them and I'm sure that you don't mean for them to happen and probably just get caught in situations where it may happen, but I'll still treat you as a person and as a friend regardless." He explained as he waited for the teacher to call their pair and tell them what bus they would be riding on and couldn't wait to get on the way with this trip.

[Ishigreensa]

Ruth got really embarrassed that the new kid had read the note and now knew that she had peed herself before.

"That hasn't happened since last year," she said in a very quiet voice.

She wasn't sure if she trusted him at his word at this point because of how everyone had always treated her, but she nodded at him anyway so as not to give him reason to want to start any teasing he planned earlier.

When they got on the bus, two of her bullies were in the seat behind her, and one of them kicked her seat.

"Did you tell your new friend that you sometimes pee your pants?" the girl asked.

Ruth's eyes watered and she looked down at her lap.

[GuardianWolves]

Terrance turned around looked at the bully and said point blank and out loud, not caring who heard "that's not a very nice thing to say to someone or make fun of them, I know I'm still new and don't know anything about Ruth, but at least I'm not a snooty bully who talks about others they don't like behind their backs and giggles about it like 4 year olds who have something to hide." He then turned back around and sat down looking at Ruth and saying "I don't wanna see you hurt, they have no reason to do that to you just because of things that happen that you can't control." He told her as he looked at her and just smiled a soft warm smile.

[Ishigreensa]

The two scowled at him.

"I'd mind my own business if I were you until you understand the class dynamics, or you might be involved in a fight, especially with a girl!"

Ruth turned and smiled at him.

"They are right, though," she whispered.  "You might have more trouble than you bargain for if you stand up to the wrong people."

[GuardianWolves]

"I don't care, I won't let them bully the person that I'm paired with, so they can think that they're better than you. They should know better than to do that." He told her as he said loud enough for the two girls to hear "don't bother my friend again." He told them and stopped talking about it and just settled in for the ride, he realized that he had just put a target on his back, but he didn't care, if he had his nerf gun with him, he'd shoot them with the foam darts just to annoy them when teachers weren't looking, but he had the more injuring plastic bbs that hurt if you don't have enough layers on to protect yourself, he should know, he had been hit many a time when he was playing airsoft at airsoft fields in his home town. He also wasn't about to get himself into trouble either, so yeah.

[Ishigreensa]

Ruth smiled.

"Okay.  But don't say you weren't warned."

She reached over and put a snickers in his hand.

"I packed some candy to eat on the trip.  I thought I might get put with someone, so I wanted to have a peace offering, but I guess for you, it's more just an ice breaker cause you are already nice to me...."

She looked down.

She did have another secret she was kind of scared to tell him about, but she wasn't sure if they had to sleep together or not yet.  She figured she'd tell him if they had to share sleeping space.

[GuardianWolves]

"Thank you." He told her as he started to open the snickers bar and began to eat it.

He wondered how they should work out the sleeping arrangement since they were gonna have to share a bed, like the teacher had said, they couldn't separate, not even to go to the bathroom, so he wondered how it was gonna be when they had to go to sleep.

He hoped that she would be more comfortable with opening up to him a bit more.

[Ishigreensa]

Ruth smiled when he thanked her for the candy bar.

"You don't think they really want us to sleep together, do you?" she asked him a little worried about something like that.  Of course, being a girl who is ten years old, she was well aware of her body growing, and certainly didn't feel like sleeping with a boy, not that any of the girls did, but even more than that, she would have even felt weird sleeping with a girl or telling another girl why, though she figured the bullies probably already had an idea of her problems.

 

 

[GuardianWolves]

"I have a feeling that they do want us to sleep together. Remember how the teacher said 'you can't separate for anything, even to go to the bathroom' I'm sure that includes sleeping together too." He told her as he noticed her worried face & expression, he tried to calm her worries in the best way he could "but hey, it's not like they're gonna be coming into the rooms and staying with each of us while we're on the trip. After all, it's like 30 of us to one of them really when you look at it." He explained and sheepishly giggled a little, he was hoping that she understood where he had been going with that "but hey, can I tell you something? I have a little sister, she's like 7 or 8 and she tends to have a lot of bathroom emergencies during the day, but at night, she has the tendency to wet herself in her sleep. My dad doesn't want her sleeping by herself, so instead she sleeps with me, which she seems nervous about, but regardless of what happens because she can't control what happens to her body, I still love her and treat her like she's supposed to be treated and how she is supposed to be treated like is a 1st or 2nd grade little girl who is my sister and that is human that has problems just like everyone else." He continued to explain and afterwards just fell silent again as he took another bite of his snickers to try and fill the silent void that was now creeping in between them.

[GuardianWolves]

starting the rp over after some discussion