School Days

As a parent the excitement builds the night before. You’re so giddy with anticipation you can’t sleep. You toss and turn waiting for morning light and the hope it brings. You replay all the Staples commercials in your head and agree that it is The Most Wonderful time of the Year. On the first day of school a parent’s expression resembles a kid’s expression on the last day of school.

On the first day of school a parent jumps out of bed like a kid on Christmas morning. Miraculously, overnight the aches and pains that usually slow them down in the morning have vanished and they’ve adapted a new personal mantra – the world is great, the kids will be gone at eight. It is this mantra they play over and over in their head as they float down the stairs to assemble lunches. It is this mantra they sing as they get the kids dressed and fed. It is this mantra they sing as they fling open the front door and wait to hear the roar of the school bus.

It is this mantra they’re singing twenty minutes later for the bus to come whisk their children off to school. It is this mantra they’re still singing (be it) a little less enthusiastically 45 minutes later when calling the bus company to find out where the hell the bus is.

An hour later, putting on socks and shoes to take the kids to school they’ve made some changes to their mantra – the world is!!***!! And why the!!***!! are the kids still here when it’s after eight? Excitement is replaced with puzzlement as to how a bus driver can get lost with all the electronic devices available to them today. There’s a wonderful device called a GPS. Get one! Use it! If the bus isn’t equipped with a GPS, the driver should use the one available on their phone. With a GPS buses would run on time and parents could go back to chanting – the world is great, the kids will be gone at eight!