The house is peacefully
quiet. The neighborhood streets are
empty. There are no abandoned bicycles
or scooters laying on their sides or basketballs left in the gutter. For a few hours a day I can drive without
worry of munchkins darting out into the street or walk quietly without the
screaming and yelling of “Tag! You’re it”
when I’m not even playing.
Of course, all this peace and
quiet comes with a couple of obstacles.
Twice a day traffic creeps along at fifteen miles per hour in front of
schools dotted along busy thoroughfares in order to protect small children and
crossing guards alike. Sometimes police
officers are staked out with their radar guns to catch the forgetful motorist.
And we do forget. I mean, really, who wouldn’t? Most people aren’t thinking about school and
unless you have a tax exemption enrolled in one, you wouldn’t necessarily know
when school started. We’re used to
driving down these roads at forty-five miles an hour and instead of sticking
the school back in the middle of a neighborhood where kids can walk safely to
class, they’ve built it on a major road.
So now, the driver screaming out to Rihanna in a voice best used with the
windows up, suddenly sees the flashing yellow light blinking “Slow down ! Slow
down!” He hits the brakes, screeching
tires as the officer just waves him off to the side of the road for a speeding
ticket that equals half of his electric bill.
The sad part is that about three
o’clock, he’s driving down the same road and he’s already forgotten his
experience of that morning as he is too busy texting some funny one-liner to
Facebook. Except now he’s given a
warning sign, which out of necessity slows him down because it’s a long line of
eager parents waiting to pick up little Johnnie just as soon as the bell
rings. To be honest, this part I never
understood. Parents will go to the
school thirty minutes early and wait for the bell to ring just so they can be
first in line. Of course, if they showed
up last they would only have to wait fifteen minutes and all of the other cars
would be gone and the kids walking home would be safely past the first crossing
guard. It’s safer and saves time to be
last in this case and allows the small child to get some of his socializing
done before he gets home.
Of course, then you have some
parents who refuse to wait in line no matter what. They arrive right as the final bell rings,
park their car and walk up into the beehive of hyper children to grab their
precious bundle of adolescence and head back to the car. Their impatience only adds to the congestion
and of course, they’re going to walk in front of you just as you’re about to
inch forward with their arm up and hand out as if they’ve got the same power as
a crossing guard. I hate that. Really, I do, and for a couple of reasons. When jaywalkers think their arm is going to
protect them from my front grill, it only makes me want to rev my engine and
take aim. Furthermore, I find parents
who take chances with their children by weaving them among moving cars to be
irresponsible and in need of a spanking.
The stores have been crazy as
well, each one resembling Wal-Mart at Christmas time. Of course, after about a week of chaos, this
turns into a bonus feature for me, because now I can schedule my shopping trips
during the school hours. I can walk up
and down the aisles unmolested by obnoxious kids whose parents need a time out.
I am also able to enjoy fine
dining establishments such as McDonald’s and Burger King without the musical
accompaniment of screaming kids unhappy with the toy in their kid’s meal. Traffic is less congested and the roads more
enjoyable. I can sit at the beach and
enjoy the serenity of it without getting sand kicked into my coffee. Of course, this limits the amount of mom’s
sun bathing in skimpy bikinis, but it’s almost winter anyway, so it doesn’t
really matter.
I enjoy kids, don’t get me
wrong. However, I don’t enjoy parents
who refuse to actually parent their child.
School is a vacation for all of us who have a low tolerance for rude and
unruly children. Now, if they would only
force the parents to go as well or at least offer mandatory classes to those
who make parenting less of a priority than they should, I might be able to
enjoy my entire day.
Teachers are heroes, in my
opinion. Not because they teach and it’s
a low paying, quite often underappreciated occupation, oh no. They chose to be a teacher knowing all of
that in advance. They could have
selected another profession. No,
teachers are heroes because not only do they deal with thirty-five plus
students per day and even more in the middle and high schools, they also deal
with at least two parents per child. If
you factor in divorce and remarriage, it could be up to four parents per
child. That’s quite a bit of
personalities to put up with for ten months.
I don’t even want to deal with my kids’ parents.
I salute the educators of the
world. It’s because of you that I get
peace and quiet every year. Thank you,
from the bottom of my sanity.
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