We were all a little afraid of her - especially the mothers. Certainly, the kids should have felt a little fear when the woman in the NASA jumpsuit at the Beuhler Challenger Space Center barked orders at them while they attempted to rendezvous with Comet Halley in a simulated space mission. But for the moms and the dad who chaperoned my son's fifth grade class on their field trip last week, it was mission of restraint - and it was about time we completed it.
After the "flight commander" introduced herself to the "astronauts," 22 fifth graders with only a vague understanding of the disaster that had taken the Challenger, the space shuttle for which the center is named, she asked them a series of questions.
"Where will we be doing our mission today?" she asked. The kids squirmed in their seats. It was obvious that they were afraid to say the wrong thing and end up the target of their flight commander's, let's say, less than warm-and-fuzzy attention.
"Space!" she answered her own question. "Oh boy, if we don't get that one, we're gonna have a tough day," she complained.
Then she explained what each kid's mission would be. My son would be in charge of the Probe, which meant that he'd have to put on a white "clean suit" and stand in a special room separated from the simulated space station by glass doors. There, he'd put together a (fake) space probe using only a binder with instructions and direction via headset from a classmate at "Mission Control."
"Parents," the flight commander warned. "Don't help them. I know it's going to kill you not to help, but they can figure it out."
Soon, I was standing outside the Probe room, watching my son's face go from excited to frightened to lost. All the other kids were in the main room of the space shuttle, helping each other figure out what exactly they were supposed to do with no training and 45 minutes on the clock.
Now and then, the flight commander gave them a little guidance. Meanwhile, my son stood on the other side of the glass door in his white clean suit, headset on and instruction binder in hand, trying to figure out how to put together a probe in the allotted time. I watched him peer through the glass into the space station, confused.
As I resisted the urge to whip open the door to the Probe room and figure it out for him, I considered asking the Medical Team if they'd packed any Maalox. Instead, I did the only thing that flight commander told us parents we could do: I took pictures...until my son shooed me away.
"I want to Lysol those gloves," one mom admitted to me as her son slipped his hands into some extra large space gloves to observe some rocks they'd retrieved from the simulated comet.
"How about that microphone Chloe keeps putting her mouth against," I pointed out.
Another mom wondered aloud, "How many kids do you think come through here each week?" But we kept our wipes in our purses and tried to stay out of the kids' way.
Half-way through the session, the kids in the space station simulator traded places (and jobs) with the kids in Mission Control. Soon, my son was guiding a classmate on how to put together the rest of the probe. He read his binder, checked the monitor, which was sending a live feed of the Probe room to him, and gave instructions over his microphone.
Meanwhile, I drifted toward the back of the room to take more pictures.
"Where were you when the Challenger blew up?" I asked another mother. She tried to remember while I offered my own story of returning from class freshman year in college to find a few dozen kids standing silently around the TV, watching the sad news.
Suddenly, the flight commander made an announcement: "Mission completed!" Then she congratulated all the kids on their hard work, and praised them for figuring out how to do their jobs all by themselves.
When we got back on the school bus, my son said, "That was cool!" His classmates agreed, and so did I. They did it - without our help. As we chaperones settled into our seats for the ride back to school, I understood that our mission was completed, too. And it's about time.