"So, do you have the cans of pop wrapped in aluminum foil?" she asked.

"Check," I said.

"Do you have the pieces of fruit?"

"Check. I even have a completely non-nutritive sugar-filled dessert with hyperactivity-inducing dyes."

"Pick me up in 15 minutes?"

"I'll be there."

We were responding to a call of nurture -- something taught to us when our young, silly-putty-like minds weren't prepared to defend us against the rigors of brain-washing so intense it would have made the Soviet Union's top agent believe he was a small limping vole in Cincinatti who responded to the name of Stiggy. Fifteen years after the conditioning started, here we were--preparing to embark on an afternoon excursion. We were responding to The Field Trip Imperative.

We used to love field trips when we were in elementary school. Anything to distract us from the tedium of the school day; anything to get us out of Social Studies; anything to get us out of P.E.

What we didn't realize is that we were buying into a scheme so grand and devious it overshadows anything that criminal mastermind Nancy Kerrigan could think of.

The triumvirate of terror in this case: the soda-pop industry, our national parks, and School Districts nation-wide. The scariest member of the triumvirate is the soda-pop industry who was able to agree on something for the second time in history (the first time was when they decided to sell things in bottles or cans instead of just having people hold their heads under the spigots).

These three groups got together to program our nation's youth to travel to America's National Parks while carrying soft-drinks wrapped in aluminum. What the schools got out of it, I don't know: money, free soft drinks in the teachers' lounge, tickets to Yosemite, the possibilities are silly. But get together they did, and now we must pay for their insidious plan.

Here's how it works: They started out small. The first field trips we went on in Elementary school were within walking distance to the school. They'd hand us a little paper bag with the essentials in it: pop (wrapped in foil, of course), carrot sticks wrapped in plastic, institutional peanut butter (peanut butter mixed with corn syrup) sandwiches in a wax wrapper. We'd go out and look at the trees or something. Something small for that first trip.

It'd gradually get worse and worse. We'd go out to larger and more diabolical places all with the hideous theme of nature woven throughout.

We once went to a farm to see cows instead of to some national landmark, but I think that was just to throw us off the track.

One kid even got shocked from the electrical fence while we were there. Some other kid grabbed it and him at the same time, thus shocking him friend while avoiding the shock himself. At the time it seemed like a harmless prank, and the shocker got seemingly punished. But I know now that the kid who got shocked was probably on to the little scheme. He was about to blow the lid on it and tell us all, "Run! Run! This is all a trap. Don't drink the soda, don't buy into this natural beauty crap," when *ZAP*. They shut him up real good.

All of this led to that final trip. It was always something big and noteworthy that they took you to for the last field trip. In my case, the Whitman Mission.

The Whitman Mission was the home of the Whitman Massacre where a missionary family was slaughtered by Indians for not curing the smallpox that white settlers had so generously shared with the indians. At the mission site you could find old farm implements, old stones left from the mission house, and a spot where Lewis (of "and Clark" fame) took a leak.

It was the "pièce de resistance." The conditioning had become complete. With that trip, it was firmly locked into my head, and hundreds of other kids' as well, that I should go to State Parks and be sure to bring plenty of soda pop with me.

Look at where the trend has gone now. Every summer millions of families pile into station wagons and crowd into America's Parks, flagrantly drinking soda pop.

So where does that leave me? I'm aware of the hideous plan, but I'm still a slave to it. Shackled by years of conditioning, bowed by the sign "State Park."

Just this week I went and visited a park with a friend. We went to Snoqualamie Falls and in full sight of God and all the park patrons there, we unwrapped our cans of pop from their foil sheaths and drank them down. We were lacking the institutional peanut butter, we didn't have carrot sticks, but still we were participants in the master plan of the Department of Parks and Recreation, the School Board and the Soda Commission.

It all had started innocently, I was just trying to think of a fun place to have a picnic when the words "Field Trip" came unraveling out of my brain. Before I knew it I had gassed up the car, collected my companion and started on the drive to Snoqualamie.

Resist, my friends. Don't buy into it. Drink apple juice and shun state parks. We can't let them win. We dare not let them win.

Copyright © 1994 by Robert T. Bakie