school parking

[velvetpage]

I looked out the window a moment ago, hoping to see Piet pulling into our driveway with my non-dm cough syrup in hand.

It is five minutes before the bell rings at the school across the street. It is raining. Hence, every parent who isn't actually at work at this time decided to drive their child the two blocks to school, rather than have the little darlings get wet or carry an umbrella. Our street is impassable for about ten minutes every morning, and rainy mornings are much worse.

There was a white pickup truck parked across our driveway. There were cars legitimately parked in front of our house and every other house on the street, so there were no actual parking spaces. Instead of dropping their child off and leaving, though, this family decided to park illegally in front of our driveway and turn off the motor, keeping their child safe and warm for the last two minutes before the bell rang.

I put my parka over my pyjamas, jammed my sockless feet into my slippers, and went out to talk to them.

"Excuse me, but you're blocking our driveway," I said in my croaking sick-voice. "My husband will be home any minute and will have nowhere to park."

They demurred, and said they'd move. Last I saw, they were moving, all right - with Junior still in the car.

Heaven save us from parents who won't let their kids get a drop of rain on them, but see no problem with having the TV babysit them every afternoon.

The bell just rang, so every car on our street is now trying to exit their parking spots and go home at exactly the same time. I wonder how the kids manage to sing along to the national anthem with all that honking.

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Why don't they let the kids in the school when it rains? When the weather is bad, they have the upper grades line up in the gym, and the lower grades line up in the auditorium.

In fact the entire winter is like that, and then in the spring they start outside lineups again.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing -- that's what they did when I was a kid, anyway ('course, most of us arrived by bus, so the parental car thing wasn't such an issue).

I hope you feel better today, Teach. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I can't talk, but then, Brad tells me I'm not supposed to, anyway. So I'm writing instead. Eight hundred words so far this morning! It's another fun scene, one that never actually happened in play - a knife fight. I wish I'd actually seen a few knife fights in my life, though. It's hard to write well about something you've only read about in fiction.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

When the weather is bad at my school, the principal puts a note on the doors telling the kids to come straight in and head for the gym. It works, generally.

I think what happened this morning is that it had stopped raining until five minutes before the kids started showing up. So the teachers getting outside found out it was raining again, but the bell was about to ring so they stayed out. It wasn't really pouring, either. When it was up to me to make that decision last spring, the deciding factor was: is it raining hard enough that the kids will be made uncomfortable by their wet clothes all morning? If the answer was no, they stayed outside. I think it would have been a tough call this morning, but I didn't have to make it.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

So when you finally run a game instead of playing, will you switch to DM syrup?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

That was almost funny. . .

Such a shame that it hurts my throat to laugh.

[redstorm.livejournal.com]

They sing the national anthem in schools??

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Every morning. In fact, the first thing I taught my class in French this year was O Canada. I actually like it better in French than in English. After all, it was originally written in French. The English is the translation.

When I was in grade school, we sang God Save the Queen, too. :) That changed when I was in grade 2, about the time Trudeau gave us a constitution to replace the British North America Act.

[redstorm.livejournal.com]

The only time I had to sing the national anthem was once for a school project assembly. Bizarre.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, yours is a lot easier to learn than ours - only the adjectives vary at all.

This seems like a very American thing to do, now that I think about it. They don't sing it in France either. Then again, I can't picture a less appropriate song for an elementary school than La Marseillaise, so that shouldn't surprise me.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Urr?

I had to sing "God Save the Queen" AND "O! Canada!" every morning until I was nine... and then just "O! Canada" after that.

[redstorm.livejournal.com]

Yea, I dunno any other friends who had to sing the anthem. I did sing hymns in morning assembly tho. But I did like those. Some were pretty funky. I remember 'Lord of the Dance' and 'Light up the Fire' were popular.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Was it a public school?

I remember singing hymns from time to time. In particular, i remember singing, "This is my Father's World" in grade 1. The theme music from LOTR always brings that hymn to mind; it has the same opening phrase. Those disappeared about the same time the Lord's Prayer did. I think it happened earlier in Toronto than in the rest of the province; I know it was gone for me by middle school, which was when I moved to TO, but Piet and others have told me they kept on much longer than that.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Yep, we always sang O Canada (until high school, when they'd just play it over the PA), half in English, half in French, and recited the Lord's Prayer (the latter up until the last year of high school, when they changed it to various meditative readings). Considering that when I was in elementary school, O Canada wasn't even the official anthem yet, I wonder when that all started... We did sing The Maple Leaf Forever and God Save the Queen at times, but not every morning.

And you have to stand for it, of course. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

This shows how much older you are than I am - the Lord's Prayer was gone for me by Middle School. I think we still had a moment of "meditation" though. Now, even that is gone.

You know, I don't know the Maple Leaf Forever? The only time I've ever heard it sung all the way through was when Anne Murray sang it for the closing of Maple Leaf Gardens. I knew enough to sing along with the first verse, but not the rest. I know the melody, of course, just not the words.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Hey, I did the Lord's Prayer all through High School, too.

And I sang "God Save the Queen" until 3rd grade.