Kevin achieved his first ‘A’ on a quiz or test since we’ve instituted the “get an A get a driving lesson” policy last week; so, last Sunday, we went down to the High School and let him do left turns and right turns for 30 minutes. Kevin got better as the day went on, learning the ‘feel’ of things, etc. Last thing we did was pull into a parking space and had him back out; pointed out how many times he would have hit another car (3) and said, the next time we would practice more on reverse….so that’s all good.
We were talking during this lesson about Dad’s favorite word to use for some drivers…..dumb-ass. I use it enough that the boys have asked me, after someone does something stupid, “Dad, was that person a dumb-ass?”…..Okay, so, I’m not a good role model here.
But, as we were talking, Kevin, who finds this term hilarious, asks me how many times a week I use it. I tell him, I don’t know, but, next week, I’ll keep track. And so I did.
The total: 4. One was for Kevin, can’t remember why exactly, but, both Mom and Dad were talking with him about something Wednesday night and he earned the moniker.
The other 3 were at my favorite driving part of the day most days; navigating the pick-up line at Bennett Woods to get Matthew and Christopher after school. I could break down the Moms and Dads who go through the line into the following categories:
a) The grizzled vets: Includes myself. Know the pattern, know the routine, and rarely rarely do something that’s not the routine. Realize this goat-fuck(!) of a situation isn’t good but doing anything else just makes it worse.
b) The foreign press: BW has a lot of international students because of the university nearby; typically, the children speak English better than the parents. I’m almost on board with the children driving better than the parents. Just no common sense; everyone else pulls forward to the end to drop their kids off, Mom A drops her kid off as soon as she hits the circle or Dad B dashes inside(!) the school while everyone in the circle waits.
or
c) The “my timers”: My time, to them, is way more important than ‘your’ time; so, they are always trying to short-cut the system, pull into the lot at the last minute and walk up and grab their kid and get back to the car quickly and try to pull out while 40 cars are in line (hey, buddy, my reverse lights are on, let me out please?).
Group A very rarely gets a DA for me; they do nothing to get me riled up. Group B gets there sometimes but Group C…..far and away the DA winners for the week.
