I can now cross “overnight chaperone” off of my bucket list along with a giant note in red ink that reads, “Who put ‘Overnight chaperone’ on my bucket list?!”

Two of our girls were in a swim meet on the weekend and Greg and I volunteered to go along to supervise the three day, two night event along with a few others.

I put on my chaperone cap which looks like a cross between my chauffeur-cap and bathing-cap. I learned a lot about the sixty-five kids we were responsible for this weekend.

• A large majority have an allergy to something.

• Some of these allergies include; dairy, gluten, horse-flies, authority figures, hotels, rules, pressing just one button on an elevator and of course, swimming.

• If you announce, “Lunch will be served at 11:30am” you will have at least one child ask you, “What time is lunch?” before you move onto your next sentence. You will then be asked by another child, “What time is it?” And finally, “Where are the clocks?”

• If you give a child a key to a hotel room, they will lock it inside the room faster than they can cough.

• Other kids will begin to call you “Mom.” Your own kids will begin to call you, Liz.

• You will sleep anywhere from zero to zero and a half hours.

• If you assign four random boys to a room they will immediately link their Minecraft accounts and play games until they are asked to stop. If you put four random girls in a hotel room, they will try to trade each other to other rooms like baseball cards.

I also learned a lot about the parents who didn’t join us on our weekend adventure but kept in touch through electronic correspondence.

“Please remind Kevin not to lose his sweater.”

“Please remind Melanie not to lend anyone her only bathing cap.”

“Please apologize to Melanie, my daughter lost her bathing cap.”

“Please don’t feed my son any horse-flies—allergies.”

There were kids who wanted to hold your hand and others who couldn’t believe they had to stay in the same city as an adult.

There were swimming races, a visit to a water-park, a few spills (my God the spills!) horse-flies, epi-pens and a whole lot of laughs.

I would do it again.