Thoughts from the Pick Up Line

It has now officially been a fully week that my son has been in Kindergarten, a week of drop-offs and pick-ups, and during the whole experience I’ve been observing, noticing, and cataloging my thoughts on the dynamics of people in those conditions. Here are some of my thoughts, and please note they are evolving so not yet fully formed and subject to change:

At pick-up for the youngest students the gate doesn’t open until a specific time. There are the parents who start waiting at the gate 15 minutes or more before it is scheduled to open, waiting in 100*+ weather. They take up the best parking first because they get there first. Then there are the parents who arrive next – still early – and wait in the car with the a/c on until the gate opens, then they get out of their car to walk to the gate and pick up their kiddo. There is of course the parent who pulls up in their car as the gate is opening and the people are funneling in, they double or illegally park somewhere, get out to get their kid then go on their merry way. I’ve stood in line with the earliest of them at the gate and it’s a mix of people being social and people being on their phones. Not worth standing outside even in the shade in my opinion.

Yesterday I watched a dad in the third category, drive up and try to park in a spot next to a car where a mom was actively trying to put away her two children. At first the guy started trying to inch his way in, but then the mom in the other car gave him a look and he just waited. But he sat there all awkward in his car, bullying her to go faster. Then of course he runs in, gets his kid, runs back out, and tries to cut his way through traffic ahead of everyone else. There’s a lot of not following the rules. If there are arrows painted on the asphalt directing cars where to go, people will completely ignore it if it means they can cut through the traffic quicker.

Afternoon pick-ups are easier than morning drop-offs, where parents start lining up thirty minutes before the main gate opens (which is a full thirty minutes before classes start so a full hour early) and. There’s a sweet spot of time between too early and on-time where, if you don’t leave the house during that time, you get stuck in the traffic just from other parents in our neighborhood! The streets become packed really quickly and depending on which way you’re going it’s easy to get stuck. I will usually go the longer way home which involves driving out of the way and circling back home, avoiding all of the problematic traffic areas since the school is near a freeway. But the other day that had a train and it was just… a mess.

It’s crazy to me that I’ve spent so much of my life avoiding certain roads and certain times of the day in order to not get stuck in school traffic, and now school traffic is going to be part of my life for the foreseeable future. The only drawback really is the cost of gas. We used to get away with alternating which of our cars we’d put gas in but now both have to have gas at the same time because both cars are being used at the same time.

I can’t wait to see what new discoveries I’ll make about people while waiting for a gate to open!