Rainy-Day Ranting

Dude. It's really raining here in my part of the Midwest. And when I say "really raining," I don't mean little sidewalk-wetting sprinkles ... I mean a big, fat, road-flooding, holy-crap-can't-we-just-stay-in-the-house kind of downpour.

And because I am such a good mom , I forgot to send my son to school with either a hooded jacket or an umbrella. (In my defense, I was trying to usher three small children out the door on time, and the baby had knocked the trash can over at the precise moment that I was cleaning up a puddle of cat yarf.) So anyway, I decided to wait patiently in the drop-off lane, behind the other vehicles, until I could pull up to the front door so that Colin wouldn't get soaked on the way in.

I should have remembered that patience is definitely not my strong suit.

This is what pisses me off. It's called a drop-off lane. Where you, you know, DROP YOUR KID OFF. It's not a place for you to park for ten minutes while you run in to the school; there's an entire parking lot, complete with empty spaces right up front, for that. So picture this scenario: it's pouring rain, and I'm behind like six other vehicles, waiting for them to (say it with me, now) drop their kids off so that I can do the same with mine. And though the chick in front of me is sitting there with the brake lights on, like she's gonna pull forward at any second, she just sits and sits (andsitsandsitsandsits). And the car in front of her pulls away, leaving an opening which should rightfully belong to me, but is promptly taken over by some yahoo in a Suburban. Which brings me to the second thing that pisses me off: people who cut in front of me in the line where I am CLEARLY waiting. I've been here for five minutes waiting my turn, and you wanna just drive your self-important ass right up in front like you own the place? These are parents who undoubtedly would chastise their kids for cutting in line at school - something we're taught from Kindergarten not to do - but they're gonna go ahead and do the adult version of it and it's supposed to be okay. Bad-mannered adults of the world, consider this your virtual bitch-slap.

Despite the moronic drivers, I was finally able to drop Colin off pretty close to the door. As he stared at all the kids entering the school with their various colorful rain protection, he said wistfully, "I wish I had an umbrella." And I was all, "I know. Just put your backpack on your head and run."*

*Now that's good parenting.

I guess I can't say much about other parents leading their kids by example, though. Because as I was pulling out of the school parking lot, my three-year-old started belting out some Ke$ha lyrics at the top of his little lungs: "Everybody breakin' bottles, it's a dirty hot mess ..." 

... Oops.

Well, at least I didn't cut in line.