And another thing...

Dear Elementary School that my kids attend. In Maitland.  In the middle of the neighborhood that's brought to you by the letter "D",

First let me say this, there is absolutely NO WAY I could do your job.  I could not, will not even pretend, that I could be around 500+ munchkins a day and not be batty.  I love them.  I really do. But that job is all yours.  And I do realize that us parents, we can be a trying lot.  "Little Jimmie doesn't like his teacher, can you move him to Mrs. Smith's class?"  Blah blah blah.  Batty. I would be batty and want to tell all of us to take a hike. Truly.

That being said, I think it should be noted that at the end of the day, we parents try to do things the right way.  We have jobs that start at 8 and end at 5 but we still work around getting our kids to school at 8:30 and picking them up at  3. For time lost at work we start on our laptops at 6 in the morning and take our blackberry to baseball practice in the evenings.  We review homework, sign papers and generally thank our lucky stars that we escaped 5th grade before the year of the FCAT.   We're trying.

Place a little more trust in us that we've got this thing.  

I know it was the first day of rain after school yesterday and things were a little chaotic for everyone.  We were all frazzled.  But it wasn't necessary to call me on my cell at 10 minutes after dismissal to find out if i was in the car line and not that I had just forgotten to pick up my kids.  I mean really, i have been doing this for 6 years now.   I'm sure you didn't see my car because it was in the pickup line that was 2 lanes thick and went past the middle school and snaked into the neighborhood a block to the back and a block to the front of the school. 

But since we're talking about the pickup line, I have some comments.  If you're going to change the way car pick up works and go from the single lane to the double lane, you might want to use this nifty thing that the PTA raised money for last year (you know, that thing that has only ever been used to tell us to get off of our cell phones (which, you called me on while i was IN pick up line) and to pull up bumper to bumper)

Because after the question of "had i forgotten my kids", the last thing I needed was this little exchange in the car line after changing lanes:

PE coach in rain slicker making awful face  - like, are you kidding me??!? face - when he saw me change lanes.  

Me, putting window down, thus dousing my cell phone: "Yes? Is there a problem?"

Coach: "We're using BOTH lanes"  (and you could almost feel the disgust oozing off him. STUPID PARENT)

Me: "Ok, I wasn't sure because this lane hasn't moved and I thought that i had gotten into the middle school pickup lane by mistake since they get out in 15 minutes"

Coach:  "Didn't you get the outbound message last night????"

Me: "Obviously not, or we wouldn't be having this conversation."  Insert charming laugh that comes up when i'm getting irritated.

Coach, smirking. " Well, we messaged everyone what we were doing."

Me: "Why didn't you put it on the roadsign back there - that's what it's for, right? Messages about pick up line?"

crickets.  crickets and jeopardy music......

Coach: "I'll tell the prinicipal you had that suggestion...(reads my pickup sign on dashboard)...Mrs. Simasek."

great...now i'm gonna get another phone call.