Park It Elsewhere – The School Drop Off Dilemma

Mornings are always hectic when there’s children involved. Those cereal munchers have no respect for time. They dilly dally like little squirrels bouncing from one cracked acorn shell to the next, hoping to find a meaty one. Only, in this case, it’s a missing shoe that is the prize. We pack ourselves into the minivan like a tin of sardines. I am more than ready to celebrate the hoodlums departure at the institution of education six blocks away.

Bad enough that it takes fifteen long minutes to get through the four-way stop and the formidable crossing guard between us and the school, but when I get around the corner just to see the drop off zone full of parked cars, my blood begins to boil. The urge to start throat chopping everyone in my sight grows with every brake light in my way that can’t pull in because of these idiots.

I do not know what makes other parents think it is okay to do this shit without realizing how many of us are scornfully imagining ramming their vehicle right out of the line. It is rude as fuck. Every parent knows damn well this behavior violates the drop off code of conduct. The school asks everyone not to park there, but apparently these parents are so shitacularly special they are exempt from following authoritative requests. (Yet they wonder why Junior keeps getting suspended for bad behavior.)

Our parking lot is located behind the school and is the size of a shoebox, it is restricted. Staff only. The drop off zone is located directly in front of the school for grades 1-5 for a reason. If we cannot let our kids off there, we are forced to let them off down the street, past school property and into the neighborhood, and walk the block by themselves. Not all of us are capable of walking with them for many reasons, which is why we want to use the drop off zone as it was intended. Some parents are handicapped or have a chronic illness which physically prohibits them from making the trek down to the building which is why they drive. Some parents have to go directly to work… Or drop other siblings off at their schools or daycare… Or be anywhere besides this should-be routine eviction of the demon spawn for the mandatory brain stretching.

Then there are those, like myself, who simply are in a hurry because they have exactly 3.25 hours to spend alone before a child returns home again – shattering the silence and the corresponding fantasies of what it must feel like to have an identity undefined by the role it was named after once more. Damn preschool for not offering an all day program!

Consider, as well, how our kids feel on bad weather days- having to walk the length of a football field in order to get to the schoolyard while your kid gets to sit in a warm, dry car. Less than fifteen feet from the entrance, no less. The only other option we rule followers have is to pull up alongside of you or try to squeeze where some of you have left. It is pure chaos as this unfolds, and it looks more like bumper cars at the county fair than school arrival. Think about how absolutely dangerous it is for everyone else’s children to be darting between double-parked cars trying to push in between and around one another.

You, you selfless assface, are solely responsible for creating this hazardous game of musical vehicles which endangers everyone… except your stinky little brat. Of course!

May I ask while we’re here, what in the balls are you even doing parked there?! C’mon now! You have nothing better to do with your time in the morning than to show up for school a half an hour (or more, sometimes!) before school actually starts? To hang out in a NO parking area, nonetheless? I can think of almost fifty dozen things to do off the top of my frazzled head with the extra time you somehow find yourself with. Hell, you could swing by my place instead and help me finish getting my kids out the door on-time. You obviously have this morning productivity thing down pat – and me, well, I’m still just a beginner. (Might I add that it scares me a little that you do mornings so fucking well?)

Now, if you are trying spend with your kid, why in God’s name are you doing it at school…in the damn drop-off area!?! Why can’t you go park down the street, if you must sit there with your kids, then you can drive back around to the doors when the bell rings? Take ‘em to the Tim Hortons just out on the main road and enjoy some real conversation over donuts and coffee, for the love of cheese and rice!

I’m pretty sure some of you nitwits are only sticking around because you want to keep an eye on your hooligans once the rest of us begin evicting our uterine trophies so they can play before the bell rings. Our school actually asks for this because it helps the kids transition into their school day better. They provide plenty of safety monitors to watch them on the playground and at the doors for each grade level- both with paid classroom/office aides and with PTA volunteers. Plus, the student safety patrol is there at the doors once they open to make sure kids don’t leave again after they enter the building. There is no need for you to cause a domino effect of problems bringing your children every morning by hanging around. If you cannot trust the school to do its job taking care of your babies, then park your vehicle down the street and go sit on the playground yourself, dammit!

Whatever your reason, please just stop parking in an area where you are not fucking supposed to.

I mean, do you really believe you are above being conscientious of other’s needs and entitled to hog what should be a free flowing drop off zone? Sure seems that way to the rest of us who follow the code. That makes you just as big of a twatwaffle douchemuncher as the evil souls who park in handicapped parking spaces without being disabled or parking in the middle of four parking spaces – as if their car is something extraordinarily priceless.

Get over yourselves already and do the rest of us parents a favor already…

Move bitch, get out the way
Get out the way bitch, get out the way
Move bitch, get out the way
Get out the way bitch, get out the way