upstream

After that first day when Jonathan and I waited an hour in this very line of cars to pick up Jackson by the front door of the elementary school, I thought there was no way I’d ever be okay with doing this every day. I don’t possess the kind of patience required to sit in an unmoving car for that amount of time without seriously considering every possible alternative. And Jon is the same way. When we pulled into the line on day two and put the car in park, he looked around and goes “Not this again.”

Truthfully, the ‘trout line’ as we call it, is not a good place to be if you are claustrophobic. You see, everyone is swimming upstream with one goal in mind: pick up kid. And say you have a sudden emergency, or another kid in the backseat with a tiny bladder, or just happen to be at the school for some reason other than claiming a child and would kindly like to leave the parking lot? You are just plain out of luck, my friend. Because the trout are all swimming that-a-way and they’ve blocked the left and right lanes. Your options are to hop the curb and trench the grass, or wait until the fish are moving.

Fortunately, with time and practice the kids and teachers now have the car loading down to a science. That hour long wait on day one turned into a fifty minute wait on day two. And now, on day sixteen, twenty minutes tops. Which is a wait this slightly claustrophobic and mildly impatient driver can handle just fine.