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.