FYI: this entire post is a totally pointless rant. I need to get something off my chest, preferably to an audience who couldn't care less and is just humoring me out of politeness, and, for reasons that will become clear later, S, my usual sounding board in such situations, is not an option this time. So, you, dear reader, are up.
Lil' S1 had a field trip a few days ago at a ropes course. I signed the permission slip and paid the fees but didn't think too much about it, until the night before when S told me he has to be at school by 8:10, so she was going to drive him instead of him taking the bus like he usually does. It's a city bus, not a school bus, and like most city buses, it's usually on time but sometimes a little late and occasionally a lot late. He typically gets to school on the bus around 8:00, but once he got there at 8:30, which is fine (first period bell isn't until 8:45), unless you are supposed to be there by 8:10.
The entire thing seemed kinda strange to me. It didn't make sense that they would schedule a field trip so that every student taking the bus (a lot of students) would have to find alternate transportation. So, if it was up to me, I would have just put him on the bus and taken my chances. But if S wants to drive him, fine, no skin off my back -- except that she checks her schedule and realizes she has a conflicting meeting and can't take him and wants me to do it instead.
I really don't want to do it, so I ask Lil' S1 how often the bus is late, and S overhears me and gets annoyed. She says that she will try to rescheduled her meeting, which, in effect, forces me to say that I'll just drive him. I'm thinking ahead to the next morning when she's rushing Lil' S1 out the door, after switching her meeting, and I'm still in bed or chilling, drinking coffee and playing Spelling Bee. That does not sound like a path toward marital bliss to me.
So, the next morning I get up and get ready. It takes about 15 minutes to get to Lil' S1's school when there is no traffic, but there might be traffic, so I check the travel time on my phone and it says 16 minutes -- good. I'm aiming to leave at about 7:40, but I mistime things a bit, and Lil' S1 is a little slow getting ready, and we don't get out the door until about 7:45. That still should be plenty of time, but when we get in the car, I notice a lot of yellow on the Maps app and the estimated travel time is now 24 minutes, making our arrival time 8:09 -- a little close for comfort.
Then, we back out of the drive, turn off our street, and immediately -- I mean immediately -- hit a backup that there's no way out of. There is nothing more infuriating than being stuck in a traffic jam on a residential street, a tenth of a mile from your house. You get this false sense of entitlement, like people should have to let you through: Get off the road, you interlopers! I live here! As we slowly creep along, I'm seeing the arrival time on the Maps app go up like that giant national debt calculator: 8:11, 8:13, 8:16, 8:17, 8:21, 8:25, 8:28...
I'm under the impression that the bus taking the kids to the ropes course is leaving the school at 8:10. I don't know if S or Lil' S1 actually said that, or if I just inferred it, but that's my working assumption. There is no way we are getting there anywhere close to 8:10, so now I'm thinking I might have to drive him to the ropes course myself, which would put me in another time bind, as I have to be in the office for a meeting in a few hours, and the ropes course is not close to his school or my office. I call S, explain we're stuck in traffic, and ask her if it's the same ropes course we've been to a few times for birthdays (it is), but she tells me to just go to school anyway (I am), because -- and this is actually what she says to me:
"You might still beat the (city) bus to school, and I don't think they will leave for the ropes course without all the kids coming to school on the bus."
I'm gobsmacked and blurt out, "That's exactly why I wanted him to take the bus in the first place!" before hanging up in frustration.
We finally make it to school sometime between 8:25 and 8:40. I honestly don't remember exactly when. At some point during the trip, I just stopped looking at the clock, trying to trick myself into being chill -- no use stressing about it now, we'll get there when we get there -- even though that never works. I park illegally because there are no spots in the lot, and we both hop out, frantically trying to figure out if the bus has left yet for the ropes course. We hustle through security (we basically just cut the line) and talk to somebody in the main office, and she's completely nonplussed as to why we're there.
"No," she says, "the bus hasn't left yet. It hasn't even arrived."
"Whew," Lil' S1 exhales, "I was worried I missed it."
"No," she half-chuckles, "you haven't missed anything. School hasn't even started yet."
As we're leaving the office, Lil' S1 happens to see some of his friends, who are going on the trip with him, walking down the hall, so he joins them. I hurry back to my car before it gets towed.
I head out to my office, stewing while I drive, wondering where that 8:10 came from. Clearly, the bus wasn't leaving then -- it wasn't leaving until after school starts (which is what I would have thought in the first place) -- so why did S say he had to be at school by then? At a red light, I pull up an email from one of his teachers about the field trip. It has a list of "important reminders" and one of them is
- Students should arrive at school by 8:10 am.
So, it doesn't say the bus is leaving at 8:10. But still, WTF?! Why is that there? Why are you instructing kids to get to school 35 minutes before it starts? My working theory is that the teacher has to do a lot of prep before they leave for the trip, and if everybody shows up two minutes before class starts, it's much more difficult to do this. But 35 minutes early?! I just don't understand. Like, if it said, "Students should try to arrive to school by 8:30" then it would make sense to me. As it is, I don't get why 8:10 is the specified time.
And the thing is, when you do something like this, you disincentivize parents from following the instructions, or even reading them, at all. Something similar happened to me somewhat recently with Lil' S2. We wanted to get him a "Kids Ride Free" Metro card, which, according to the school newsletter, were supposed to be available after an open house. So, I went to the open house, waited around until the end, and went to the place where it said to go, and none of the teachers there knew where the cards were, or even that they were supposed to know. I'm admittedly pretty bad about carefully reading messages from the boys' schools, but this is part of the reason why. They are very often either not relevant or not helpful, and sometimes they make things worse. Actually, I just remembered an even better example of a time Lil' S1 did an entire poster board project for something that wasn't actually assigned, because of an erroneous message, but I think you get my point without going into the details there.
Anyway, back to my story, I'm super annoyed the entire drive to my office. I want to take it out on somebody, but there's nobody to really be mad at. I mean, I could be mad at the teacher who said 8:10, but what am I going to do about it -- write an email settling her hash because my son didn't miss the bus but I thought he might? Sure, that's sane behavior. And I could be mad at S for not letting Lil' S1 take the bus to school in the first place, but she was just doing what she thought was best, given the instructions in the email. Also, she could say I should've left earlier (which I should have). Also, also, I kinda already got mad at her on the phone, and I'm hoping she's not sore about that.
So, I try to let it go. But I do need to give S an update on the situation, so I think about what type of text I should send. Do I let on how annoyed I am? Do I rant about 8:10? Do I mention anything about any buses at all? I decide no on all accounts. I'm going to play it zen. I'm just going to let her know Lil' S1 made it, and then not bring it up again.
"All good" I text.
"Good!" she replies.
And that's that.
My wife and I aren't quarreling; my kid made it to his field trip; and I got some material for this blog. So, I guess this story has a happy ending, but it didn't seem like that at the time.
Until next time...
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