Scarlette is in preschool a few mornings a week this year and car line has been a slight source of distress for me. I mean, first there was that time I got chastised for not correctly counting the number of cars ahead of me before I pulled in. Then there was that time I sent my husband to pick Scarlette up and I got a vague text from the school saying there had been an accident in the afternoon car line. It didn’t even involve my husband, they were just late because they stopped at the store but my nerves did not take too kindly to that incident.
Then there is the whole thing about having to remember the carline sign. Remembering things is not my forte.
Anyhow, the biggest annoyance about car line is that Scarlette wants to get out of her carseat, like the other kids, and so she starts asking me to unbuckle her from the moment we leave our driveway in the morning.
The way our car line works is that we wind around through a back road, the car line goes straight through one small intersection and then turns left across a street and into the parking lot. Then we pull into the parking lot six cars at a time (and NO MORE, apparently) and the teachers get the kids out of the car and take them inside (which is very nice, actually.)
But before we get to the parking lot, we see the other kids just floating around in their cars. I mean, they aren’t actually floating. It’s not like some sort of gravity-free carline. But they are walking around or hanging out the windows waving to one another.
I thought that maybe it was a minivan thing, with the kids walking around and all, because that is kind of the equivalent to a school bus. I would not know on account of how I would like to have a minivan but I only have the one kid and also how my legs are too short to reach the pedals and see over the dashboard at the same time.
But I keep seeing people unbuckling their kids and letting them climb in the front seat while we are all still in the line. It seems that I am the only one who makes Scarlette stay buckled up, a fact that she has not missed. I really thought she would be older than three before I was introduced to the whole “But all the other kids are doing it” aspect of parenting.
When I was a little girl we lived within walking distance of my elementary school and sometimes I sat on my dad’s lap and steered us home in his truck. And sometimes when we went on long road trips I would curl up and lay down on the floor in the backseat of the Corolla to nap. (I was a very small child.) Those are sweet memories but I am still too neurotic to unbuckle Scarlette before I have made the left turn into the parking lot.
So now what I do is, I pull into my space in the parking lot and quickly unbuckle her as the teacher is walking over. Scarlette hops down into the backseat and giggles like crazy as her teacher opens the door, as though she has gotten away with some fantastic scheme. One day soon she’s going to be on to me.
So inquiring minds want to know: What do YOU do? Do you unbuckle your kids in the car line?
(No judgement either way, I’m just curious to know if this is like, a thing and I’m the only one holding up car line?)
