I don’t know how this happened, but apparently I have amassed
more than a million hours sitting in the carpool line. Seriously.
Oh sure, you think I’m exaggerating, but sadly, I’m not. OK, fine.
I am. Maybe it just seems like a million years. But I did I read
online that the average parent spends three years waiting in a
carpool line.
I don’t know how this happened, but apparently I have amassed more than a million hours sitting in the carpool line. Seriously. Oh sure, you think I’m exaggerating, but sadly, I’m not. OK, fine. I am. Maybe it just seems like a million years. But I did I read online that the average parent spends three years waiting in a carpool line.
Um, hello? That’s three years I’d like back please.
Really, I want those years back. I’m sure I could spend them doing something way more fun that sitting behind an idling SUV, wondering which of the 10-year-olds arguing over who has shotgun is the student of the month.
The truth is, the only thing that separates modern parents from our animal counterparts is our unique ability to waste $5 per gallon of gas in a line that only accepts slow moving children and spontaneous parent-teacher conferences. These conferences always occur between the mother blocking the only exit and the teacher trying desperately to get her the hell out of the way so they can discuss Little Johnny’s failing math grade at another time.
Yeah, I might have some lingering anger over the carpool line. Just a little.
But seriously, who can blame me? I’ve spent three years of my life staring into the back of a Volvo with a sticker that says, “I love my French bulldog.” Or watching as parents who are normally sane, upstanding, polite people turn into SUV driving monsters that wedge their car (which is so big it can seat an entire football team) into the two feet of space between my car and the compact sedan in front of me.
Um, really? Are you that important that you have to block both of us from leaving? And you know, oh you just know, that the kid getting into that car is nowhere near the carpool line. Nope, that kid is still at the back of the campus, flirting with a girl who will never in a million years date him. In the meantime, my kid is in the car. The compact sedan has their kid in the car. And yet, we are stuck in the carpool line, thanks to the SUV who will not wait.
Yeah, I definitely have some lingering anger over the carpool line.
The problem is that there are varying degrees of carpool line efficiency. Many schools attempt to regulate the carpool line. They have plans. And diagrams. And school officials armed with radios and whistles sitting in golf carts, telling parents where to go and what to do.
The issue with that is many parents believe that once they are out of school, they are free to disobey the yard duty. Or the principal. That means they can park in the middle of the street. Or make a sudden U-turn in front of you, making you spill your freshly brewed latte all over your new white pants. Um, yes, I do speak from experience on that one.
Or the powers-that-be create a non-moving carpool line (where all the cars are in a line in the parking lot and nobody moves until their kid is in the car). In a non-moving carpool line, the car directly in front, blocking the only way out, will have the child who is the slowest moving in the school.
That child can take up to 20 minutes to exit the classroom, tie his shoes, pause for a swing on the monkey bars, get a drink of water, dribble a basketball, lose all the papers out of his backpack, stuff all the papers back in his backpack, find a lost puppy, return the lost puppy and then finally get to the dang car.
You can imagine the honking and swearing that goes on in a non-moving carpool line.
I did have one carpool line that was perfect. It was run with an efficiency rarely seen in carpool lines. If your child wasn’t waiting for you at a specific stopping point, you had to drive around until your kid was ready to be picked up. It was a dream carpool line, one that I fantasize about frequently while I am sitting outside Junior’s school, wondering how the person in front of me can see through the five sandal decals, two leaping dog decals and one “I love Mustang Tennis” decal stuck to her rear window.
Carpool lines. Three years of your life. Three very long years that you can never, ever get back.
