Pull Off to Drop Off

Wednesday . . . morning.

Was up for about a half hour before the boys crawled out of bed. It's now 6:25. Coffee in hand. Blend of regular stuff with some French vanilla. Cream only. Extra large mug.

Fire up the iMac.

Poke John. Poke Gail. It's just what we do. Read comments on comments.

One message of blog encouragement - thanks Kim. One and a half of chastisement/encouragement - sorry Heather, sorry Justin.

Boys begin fighting over how to use the coffee table in the living room. Sonwun is feeling motivated. He's off to get dressed for school. Sontoo apparently won the coffee table battle and is playing his toy piano and singing and dancing. Too loud. But cute.

Okay, brain starting to work. I've been wanted to talk about the school parking lot for a while. It drives me nuts on a daily basis. It's too small and some people just refuse to follow the rules. Now, I remind myself a little of Michael Keaton here, in the Mr. Mom movie of the 80s.

(Quick aside here. I belong to an on-line community of Stay-at-home Dads. Pretty sure I've mentioned it before. Anyhoo, there are many of them who despise the term Mr. Mom. Personally, doesn't bother me. And I liked the movie.)

In the movie, Keaton loses his job and becomes a SAHD. In the beginning, as he struggles with the new role, he causes problems in the school drop-off zone because he just doesn't understand the rules. By the end of the movie, after his transformation into "Mr. Mom" he's the one with the stop sign, directing others in the proper parking procedure. (There's more to the movie, of course, but this is somehow relevant to me this morning).

Okay, cool, just found the video:

Now, parking lot at Sonwun's school. It's basically a three-lane loop. The PROPER procedure is for cars to enter the lot, pull either to the left or right (leaving centre lane of loop open) and drop off the kids. Then pull back into centre lane to drive around and exit. Pull off to drop off. Pretty simple.

See, this way, we don't all have to wait while each car stops in the centre lane to drop off the kids. There is simple logic here. But, every morning, after I pull over and boot Sonwun from the manly mini-van, I pull back into the centre lane, only to find three cars stopped while the kids unload back-packs, sleds and lunches; struggle with doors and kiss their parents good-bye.

This slows the rest of us down and has a tendency to back the traffic up right to the street, making entrance and exit dangerous and difficult. I realize it's a small thing, but it pisses me off. It chips away a small piece of my sanity each morning. And I don't have much to spare.

I think this morning, when I take Sonwun in, I'll bring my video camera. After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video . . .

Okay, it's now 9:03 a.m. Took the video camera in the manly mini-van to drop Sonwun off at school. And, as Murphy would have it, everyone followed the rules. So just forget it.

Okay, only a thousand more words to go: Hydroponics day 22.

Have a great Wednesday!