Member-only story
Pick Ups and Drop Offs
These are the moments we get
During the school year it seems so much of my time can be spent in the vehicle just taking my kids from one thing to another. It starts in the morning with 5 kids heading to 3 different schools. We get an early start so it only takes about a half hour from the time we leave the house to the time I roll into the parking lot at my office.
Mornings are the easy part — as long as there isn’t rain, snow or ice. Those weather changes tend to throw people’s schedules and tempers into chaos.
Afternoons to evenings are a different beast altogether. Pickups are a bit more hectic and free-for-all than drop-offs. People tend to get more pushy and impatient and creative with their attempts to get their kids first. I don’t know whether it’s because they’ve finally woken up and their niceness has worn off or whether their coffee has worn off and the grumpy has finally found it’s place firmly behind the steering wheel.
Either way, pick-ups entail multiple schools and multiple kids again, but who and how many depends on who has what sports’ events right after school. The practices and matches and meets are a welcome change though because it usually means at least one school gets skipped from the chaos.