#so i have no idea how realistic percys lack of supervision was

[realredbanana]

Totally random thing, I’ve got no idea if this has already been mentioned but, Percy Jackson’s reasons for getting expelled were so obviously not his fault (I get that that’s the point), like:

‘See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn’t aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that… Well, you get the idea.’

I’m sorry but, both of those were a case of the adults being incompetent.

1) Why would you let a 9-11yr old, who is known for doing stupid and impulsive things, be that unsupervised on a school trip? (like, I knew kids who had to hold a teacher’s hand (and stay next to a teacher during lunch) the entire time because they did impulsive stuff that was nowhere near that extreme)

2) Why was the revolutionary war cannon functional? And if it was meant to be, why could kids get to it? And why did it have accessible ammunition? And how long was Percy out of a teacher’s sight for him to be able to load, “aim”, and fire a cannon? (I’m not saying Percy should’ve done it, but I am saying that it shouldn’t have been able to happen)

3) Why were the kids able to access the shark pool catwalk lever? How does the catwalk retract in order for everyone to fall in? If it went upwards, then everyone could, reasonably, walk back off the catwalk. If it went downwards, sure, everyone might fall in, but why would it go down? It might hit the sharks. If it retracts back into the wall, how fast would it need to be going for everyone to fall in? Also, why was the lever to control the catwalk on the catwalk? That seems like an atrociously bad idea. Also, just, generally, why were there not precautions in place to prevent this from happening? (Once again, not saying that Percy was right to do it, but he shouldn’t have been able to do it)

In summary, none of those events were completely Percy’s fault. It was literally just a combination of the sites having zero precautions in place and the adults not supervising him well.