This is a shout out rant for all of those "taxi" moms who are unappreciated and who spend countless hours driving back and forth to school and other extracurricular activities for their offspring. Many hours can be tallied up that we should have never had to waste while due to miscommunications or just plain ignorance of the situation. My last week had three such events, and it has left me with a desire to hang up my taxi license entirely.
I think I may add to this post as events arise....
THE VAGUELY SCHEDULED PRACTICE:
Yes, if you have a kid in sports it is not the games that kill you, its driving them every stinking day to some practice somewhere (God knows where) to "practice" or "scrimmage" or to a "tournament" that doesn't really count for anything anyway. Doing this with two kids at a time and with the cost of gas off the hook, and traffic at rush hour gridlocked, I feel like an LA commuter on amphetamines. We have Soccer Practice, Volleyball Practice x 2, Softball Practice, and Church on Sunday and Wednesday.
This particular day my HS age daughter told me upon dropping her off that morning that due to the fact that they were going to have a team dinner practice would be getting out "early". Normally it goes to 5:15. This translates into "I tell mom it ends at 5, but then she shows up at 5:05 and we really don't get out until 5:25" And that is only after mom comes inside and in front of the coach points at her watch and puts her thumb toward the door. I guess coaches don't really respect us moms either, a matter I could expound on at length...but again I digress.
Apparently "Early" to her (and most SANE people) means around 3:30 and they would go to an early supper and be picked up around 4pm. So she tells me to be at the school to pick her up at 4pm. I get there at 4:02. I wait. And wait. And wait some more. I see NO cars anywhere so I start to think that something strange is going on (why do I do this to myself?). I start to text other moms on the team to see if they know what time they were going to be released. No one replies. I try to go to the door, and it is locked. It is now 4:45 when my daughter "strolls casually" out to the car with a big smile on her face. I am not as jovial. I don't even get a chance to ask "So wth were you sweetie?" when she said "oh I didn't know you were here...I could have gotten a ride with someone else on the team. Now can you take me to Jimmy Johns?" I just about puke at this point. What ?? Are you kidding? I thought you did that already? Why was I here? She said "I don't know". What? Maybe that was someone else who told me this morning to pick her up at 4pm. She said "that was if I wasn't going to Jimmy Johns. But since you gave me money, I guess I can go right? The fun part was that after dropping her off to eat lunch with her team she said "pick me up in like an hour". So I went to get her younger sister from practice which ended around 5:30. I was in the lot waiting for my MS kid about 15 minutes when the phone rings and its HS kid. She says "we are done, can you come get me?". I am feeling like a human yo-yo about this time. I let her know that I will wait till her sister gets out then go back and get her. That is just so inconvenient for her. So she has her GF drive her to the school and drop her off. She is in such a great mood, I almost hate to tell her what a total PITA she has been to me that day. But I do anyway.
Jimmy Johns aside, wouldn't she think to tell me that the pickup time had changed? And as 4pm passed with her still in the gym, don't you think she might maybe think about her poor mother who is probably outside? Nope. Not a chance. And that was only Monday. Now on Wednesday....
THE EARLY RELEASE:
Our school, in an effort to "better educate" our teachers (i.e. give them time off without pay and save money) has started what many districts are implementing, the "early release" day. Some schools I have heard have even reduced the school week to 4 days, so since we have not gone that far, we are all supposed to like and enjoy having to pick our kids up at 1pm every other Wednesday. I myself am of the parental "old school" mentality, and I already think our kids need to be more challenged, both on the difficulty of the coursework and the measly 6 hours of the school day, so this really ticks me off but I digress....
Anyway, it is a challenge to have any meaningful existence outside of the home with this kind of schedule, but we do what we can to make sure our kids are not the LAST ONES picked up after school...God forbid they should suffer the scorn of the forgotten child! So last Wednesday, knowing that my Middleschooler gets out at 1:10, and my HS teen gets out at 1:20, and that after that they both had either volleyball practice, volleyball games, or soccer games, I knew my day was shot when I woke up that morning.
Keep in mind that my kids, being well fed, well cared for, loved and respected by their parents, are the LEAST appreciative of the insanity this kind of schedule puts on another human being.
So I wait patiently for my MS kid, who comes out a bit late because she said she didn't know if I was coming to the front or the back lol---I have never NEVER been one of those crazy sheep parents who wait in an endless line of cars just to pick my kid up at the front door. No sir I am of the ilk that if I can "find away around the current system without breaking the law" I will do it. So she crosses a parking lot, climbs a hill and walks down a street to meet me where I wait with my car (among other more creative and albeit intelligent parents who also hate to wait) and can quickly whisk ourselves away down a catacomb of sidestreets away from traffic toward my next destination...whatever that may be that particular day.
But her delay has put me off schedule for her sister who gets out only 10 minutes later. So I race (literally) to the HS so that I can get in line and WAIT for every single other child to walk out of the school and get into their parents car and leave. Some "good" kids even go so far as to "WAIT OUTSIDE FOR THEIR PARENTS". I know, I know, it is a really amazing thing to see those OTHER kids who actually respect their parents time enough to wait for them and not casually wait inside with their friends until mom is texting frantically "R U coming out? Been here 10 min!!"
My HS student is nowhere to be found. Tick tick tick the clock is ticking in my head because driving me is the schedule I still have to fill....getting younger sister back home, fed, to her vball game, then soccer, then church later that night.
So I am forced to do the UNTHINKABLE. Yes, I will have to GO INSIDE THE SCHOOL to look for my daughter. It is at this exact moment that I really regret that I brushed my hair and put on makeup. In fact I really wish I had stayed in my Pajamas and perhaps had a hair net on or something...anything to make this entire experience as painful to her as it is to me (well to my pride anyway).
But alas, she is not there. But her best friend is. Hi Mrs X! How are you doing? She even ran (yes RAN) and opened the door for me with a huge smile. (Okay so this is not my kid. But for just this one moment I am wishing I could trade because I know the whereabouts of this child, and this one appears to be grateful to see me). I ask about Elaina. No one has seen her. One girl says she saw her by her locker talking to ??? but didn't see her after that (how helpful no go back to talking to your boyfriend honey).
Of course I have already texted her 3 times, along with her boyfriend (yes she has a boyfriend, he is actually not that bad, and I will discuss this in other posts but not here) and called them both twice and NO ONE WILL REPLY OR ANSWER THE PHONE. I am pretty sure that if the ten commandments were written today, that in commandment #5 it would say "Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father and REPLY TO ALL TEXTS!!!" I mean is it so hard to say "Thanks" or "Okay" or "F-U Mom". For all us unappreciated mothers think they have launched their text into a black hole of nothingness and they never got to their destination. So if you get a text from your mom...please at least let her know you got it...okay now on to the rest of the story.
So no one has seen her, so with finality I say "So why am I here? I am leaving she can find her own way home" but not before I send a threatening text to her father and BF "My daughter is MIA...the next call I'm making is to the cops!"
Well I get that creepy mom instinct that she may have split to go to spend a little alone time with BF. I mean after all what are early releases for? I am pretty sure that the pregnancy rate at our school will be found to increase with the implementation of the early release. Oh he** no! Not my kid...if that is what is going on...I am going to find her! So I go by BF's house, but he lives in a townhouse and it is hard to tell if anyone is there. But I notice that the blinds of the doorwall are partially open, and I am at least pretty darned sure that if anything nefarious was going on, they would have the good sense to close those blinds, so I drive home to make lunch for MS kid. But I quickly call the mom of BF just to see if perhaps she has heard from her son. It goes to voice mail. I hang up intending to text her since who really uses voice mail anymore?? As I am texting my phone rings. It is my first born. She sounds really annoyed. Not the best judgement on her part. And to think I was expecting a compliant child. A humble child. A contrite child.
No way. Wrong kid. Not in my lifetime. My daughter has at least two arguments before breakfast just to get her blood pumping. She give no quarter. Pretty sure she would arm wrestle Mother Theresa and brag about winning. My daughter acts very put out. She said she was in the library and hadn't looked at her phone. Apparently BF called her when her backpack was next to her leg so she finally realized that there was a purpose for having a cell phone and she answered it. BF told her to call mom right away "she is pretty upset". So it is not surprising (knowing my daughter) that she called me with the attitude of "wth do you want, don't you know how busy I am?"
Being the insane mother I am, I explain the entire diatribe to her of what she has put me through. Of course she doesn't listen and doesn't much care. She says "Since when do you pick me up on the early release days?" I sincerely don't know what she is talking about since I have been doing this for over a year. As blood fills my eyes and I ask "Hey how about a phone call? Or a text? Would that have been too much effort?" Or how about just telling me when you got out of the car that morning that you didn't need me to pick you up? As if....
Now this same girl, the next day will have her girlfriend call me at home and ask if at 3:30 I will make a trip up to her school (6 miles away in RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC) to bring her food because she was too busy straightening her hair to make an extra sandwich. AGGGGGGGGGGG! Fortunately I was canning tomatoes, so I didn't have much guilt saying "NFW babycakes!"
No comments:
Post a Comment