Hell Is a Car Pick Up Line

car pick up 2

It’s long, it’s boring and the end result is a child. It’s actually very similar to sex sometimes. The dreaded Car Pick Up Line. It is inevitable if you drive your child to school. You will sit in the Pick up line. The drop Off line is nothing. It takes mere minutes. The longest part of drop off is traversing the winding road leading up to the area where your little munchkin hops out of the car and you get a few minutes of blessed silence before you have to either go to work or begin your daily routine of chores and never-ending laundry. But Pick Up…..that’s a whole different monster entirely.

Mine is a special kind of Hell. you see Bean goes to a school in a more affluent part of town. The Beach side. It’s not uncommon for me to be surrounded by BMW’s, Mercedes, Audi’s and even a Porsche. Why someone would buy a 4 door Porsche sports car is beyond me, but hey…..whatever floats your yacht. I drive an American made SUV that is almost 8 years old. I’m slumming it compared to these other parents. And that’s just my car. Just wait.

The types of parents you will encounter in the Pick Up Line are a vast array of personalities. There’s;

“Tennis” mom. She looks adorable in her perfectly matched tennis skirt, tank top and coordinating sneakers. The thing is, her sneakers don’t have any scuff marks. Her makeup and is perfect and every hair is in place. This mom just wants you to think that she plays tennis in her free time. What she really does is sit at the tennis club (yes we have those here) and drink martinis at the Tiki Bar. Trust me, I know a bartender at one of those clubs. I know.

The Yoga mom. Now there are actually 2 subtypes of this category. There’s the pseudo-yoga mom, who really just wears yoga pants 99.9% of the time and hopes that people think she is holistic and calm and centered when actually she’s a hot mess because she basically runs a small country. I am part that yoga mom.

Then there’s legit Yoga Mom. She is slender and sinewy. She wears yoga pants like she was born in them. She only feeds her kids organic, non-GMO foods and she probably drives a hybrid, complete with a Namaste sticker on the back right next to the magnet for the school.  In fact she’s so enlightened you really want to shove a Twinkie down her throat while she’s in downward dog and watch her crumble. Her only flaw is the fact that she smells slightly like Patchouli no matter what. It lingers. You can smell it under her designer perfume. It’s always there. It wafts out of her vehicle and into yours.

The PTA mom. Ugh……the PTA mom. She knows when every school related event happens. She is able to rattle off every early release and school holiday. She has no problem walking down the Pick Up line selling T-shirts, raffle tickets and whatever else the school is peddling. It’s best to just put limousine tint on and don’t make eye contact when she gets near your vehicle.

The Clueless Father. Not all dads in the Pick Up Line are clueless. Usually the clueless ones are the dads who got called at the last minute because mom’s Hot Yoga class ran late and now the poor guy is sitting in the line like a deer in headlights. He’s clearly not even sure if he’s in the right place. Hopefully he picks up the right kid. Or the right amount of kids.

The Tech Mom. I personally hate this mom. She is either Facebooking, Instagramming or crushing candy while waiting for the line to move. Then once the line starts moving she’s in a bonus round and forgets she has people behind her waiting anxiously to pick up their beloved children and hear all about their day at school. Actually, why don’t you go ahead and finish that bonus round, I’m good waiting.

All these pale in comparison to when the line actually starts moving. The line at Bean’s school. is a double line that merges into a single line. This requires that people not be assholes. That is humanly impossible. For some reason people seem to be in a rush and forget common courtesy of alternating sides. It gets ugly. Like I’ve wanted to get out of my car and physically accost someone. It’s ridiculous the amount of rudeness and disregard that can occur in a rush to get to your child. Not that any of it matters because you still have to wait once you get to student area. You have to wait for the teachers to get your child’s attention. you have to wait for the car in front of you to finish loading all those kids….how many kids can fit in a Denali anyway?

And I dedicate hours a week to this. It basically equates to roughly 2 hours a week of sitting in this line, enduring this. I can think of several other things I’d rather spend 2 hours on, and most of them do not include my car, kids or other parents. a word to the wise…..Let your kid ride the bus.

Until next time, keep those toes in the sand and your windows up!


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