Let’s Stick Together

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“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

Last Thursday, I had a moment of chaperone panic. I was in charge of Mr. D and another 5-year-old, a little girl named, Lydia. She was a delightful little girl who wanted to name our team, Rainbow Unicorn. So she was exactly on message for her age group.

After seeing all the sights, playing the games, eating lunch and picking out pumpkins, I asked Lydia if she wanted to do the corn maze. She had said several times she wanted to do it. As we approached the entrance of the maze, it was just the three of us: Mr. D, Lydia and me.

We walked fifteen feet to the first intersection and Lydia yelled, “Let’s split up!”

I bit back my scream of “Noooooo!” and eked out a mostly calm, “Let’s stick together.“

It strikes me that spreading chaos is a little fun. Not that little Lydia meant anything by it. She was just injecting a little five-year-old energy into the event.

Maybe my panic struck a little harder than usual since it’s election season in the US. I’m tired of the divisiveness that stokes up fear and the conflict entrepreneurs that capitalize on it. Let’s stick together.

61 thoughts on “Let’s Stick Together”

  1. Chaperoning kids that are not yours can be stressful especially when they have a mind of their own! 😆 in fairness to Lydia, I would’ve done the same with the maze. What a fun outing you all got to enjoy together.

    I hear you about elections. You sometimes have to intentionally fast on the news and social media headlines because it’s going to get quite intense over the next few days!!!

    Liked by 3 people

  2. I like how you brought in a togetherness message for us adults at the end, even if it feels like we have 2 completely opposing teams that are bound and determined to trounce each other

    We don’t have to all become rainbow and unicorn believers, but we can choose to stop being so polarized. We’re acting as though everyone on the opposite team is an extremist, when few are.

    Good for you for surviving the corn maze with everyone intact! 😉

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    1. “We don’t have to all become rainbow and unicorn believers, but we can choose to stop being so polarized. We’re acting as though everyone on the opposite team is an extremist, when few are.” Oh, Tamara – that is so good and right on!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m dismayed when it comes to light that the pundits who were sowing the most discord were shown to be taking money from Russia. That smacks of betraying the American people in the worst kinds of ways.

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  5. What an effective analogy for promoting a critical message, let’s stick together. Thank you, Wynne. I hadn’t encountered the expression “conflict entrepreneurs” before, and I’m not sure whether a little bit of chaos really is fun, but I do know that all this divisiveness and fear-mongering is very harmful. If we can’t all stick together, let’s at least be respectful. 🙏

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    1. I believe that identifying the conflict entrepreneurs – the forces that benefit from staying in conflict – is very important to those who study and practice conflict resolution. I find it an interesting idea to think about who those folks might be. Thanks, Jane!

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  6. Oh, Lydia…her adventuresome heart got mine racing. (I have a corn maze trauma story…for another time!). Thanks for expressing the angst I feel. Stick together and play nice. Geez. Yes. ❤️

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    1. Oh, I can believe there are many corn maze trauma stories! Maybe one day we’ll get to hear yours! Hope you can reassure your heart that there were no five-yr-olds harmed in this story! 🙂 ❤

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  7. Rainbow Unicorn—my favorite nickname for myself. Though I am no longer in the five-year old category, I’m glad to know that someone is contemplating naming a team named after us. If Rainbow Unicorns ruled the world, we’d all be better off, with a single purpose of healing and unity. Let’s hear it for the famed and fabled unicorns!

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    1. Oh, you are such a good representative of the Rainbow Unicorns, dear Julia! Healing and unity — yes, yes, yes!! Thank you for adding your light to this post, my dear friend! ❤ ❤ ❤

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  9. I like the picture, Wynne. We’re all in the same maze. Short term separation might be fun and challenging, but you won’t get out of the maze together… and in this analogy it’s important to consider the most vulnerable who may easily get isolated or lost.

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  11. I have a few friends and acquaintances who will vote for the other team, Wynne. I hear your frustration, but also recognize danger on the other side.

    If one has seen the vile caricatures portrayed and the equally vile speech spewed against Abraham Lincoln by average men and members of the press over 160 years ago, one realizes that respectability was set aside in the USA well before our time. If you read John Dower’s Pulitzer Prize winning, “War Without Mercy,” a book about that portion of WWII that involved race hatred on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, you will recognize what occurred in the lifetimes of our fathers and grandfathers.

    Caricatures of the Japanese, portrayed as buck-toothed and myopic, were even featured in “Looney Tunes” cartoons like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy9rGAO-qfc&t=150s and similar short movies seen by children.

    You will recall that over 100,000 Japanese/American citizens of the USA were taken from their homes and interned for approximately four years, losing their homes, businesses, friends, freedom, and respect: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/japanese-american-internment/

    I agree that there is much reason to “stick together” and to be respectful. I do my part on both counts, but that doesn’t set any limits to my thought on how we got to this position and which political party and which presidential candidate is more responsible for opening the Pandora’s Box you are referring to. As a result, I do my small part to try to defeat him and those who support him.

    To my mind, no better commentary on where we are was spoken by German Pastor Martin Niemöller late in the 1940s, reflecting his own expression of grief and responsibility for not saying enough soon enough against a specific form of totalitarianism when there was still time to do so in public without being arrested, imprisoned, and often worse:

    First they came for the Communists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Communist

    Then they came for the Socialists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Socialist

    Then they came for the trade unionists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a trade unionist

    Then they came for the Jews
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Jew

    Then they came for me
    And there was no one left
    To speak out for me

    Liked by 3 people

    1. What an incredibly thoughtful response, Dr. Stein! I love your point, “but that doesn’t set any limits to my thought on how we got to this position and which political party and which presidential candidate is more responsible for opening the Pandora’s Box you are referring to.”

      The way you put this in context of the divisiveness over the centuries help. But I agree – we all bear responsibility for standing up for freedom, people, and principles we believe in. I too am doing all I can in my small way to defeat the fear and totalitarian rhetoric that is frightening.

      My overall point was aimed at being wider than this election and not joining an “us” versus “them” feeling no matter what cause I’m working for.

      Liked by 1 person

  13. What an innocent, energetic, and beautiful example in the lesson of sticking together Wynne. “Chaperone panic” huh? I’m sure you had to stay on your toes! But you got through it my friend, along with a profound message. Cheers! 😁🥂🥰

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  14. I don’t think your panic was too hard at all. When my daughter was young, we were out of town for a swim meet and stopped at Target for something. I had two of her teammates with her. They were maybe seven years old? The two girls I was chaperoning took off running through the store! I was beside myself.

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  19. Nice post, Wynne! You made the connection between the maze and what’s currently going on in the U.S. beautifully. Nothing that a couple of AirTags will fix—well, not the current political divide, but kids splitting in the maze.

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  20. I love how you pulled the togetherness out of this experience Wynne, to combat the divisiveness that is currently threatening all of humanity; the US elections and beyond.
    Sticking together certainly makes for a strong and safe team effort. Love this!

    Liked by 2 people

  22. Losing a child on a field trip has to be an elementary teacher’s biggest fear. How could that happen you may wonder? It did, well not to me, but to one of my colleagues when one of her students got lost at our local zoo. Between our two classes, there were about 40 kids and 13 adults (including the two teachers). Rather than try to keep all of the kids together in one place, each adult was responsible to keep track of three kids, what seemed like an easy task to me. We got back on the bus after we finished, and one of the other teacher’s students wasn’t there.

    Inexplicably, one of the parents had lost one of her three students. The girl had gone to the bathroom and then somehow got separated from the parent. Not wanting to scare everyone, the teacher and I left the bus driver in charge and made up an excuse and raced back to look for her. Talk about feeling panic. Amazingly, we found the spacey kid in the petting zoo, oblivious that she was alone. She was simply petting the goats without a care in the world.

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  23. I would’ve felt the same way, Wynne. Let’s stick together is a good idea, and I wish it for all humanity during these times. We’ve never been so divided. Moving forward is like running through that maze, not knowing what lies (or lurks) around the next corner. Great post! 🧡🍂

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