Alone, Together: Pick-Ups On The Blacktops

Good afternoon mom at preschool pick up, waiting on the steps of the church until they unlock the doors at exactly 2pm.  Hey, remember me!  Our older kids were in the preschool together (although now they go to separate schools) and we just talked about that this morning at drop-off!  Everyone is getting so big!  Isn’t that crazy how kids keep…getting older…yup.  So how is your work going that you used to do?  You had a job at the…hospital?  Oh yeah, data analytics, of course!  Oh you moved companies?  Cool cool…never heard of that one but I also had never heard of the last company you worked for, so it all sounds awesome!  Me?  I am still at home, mostly!

Yup.

So how is your youngest offspring liking preschool here?  Oh great!  Smooth as silk huh?  That is great, it is so great to have a nurturing environment for them where they feel safe and loved and stimulated!  It’s great!  My littlest one?  Oh, she hates it a little bit, but only at drop-off and pick-up!  She feels like they are all evil child snatchers who are going to take her away from me forever, she starts crying when we pull into the parking lot and see the building and then when I pick her up in the afternoon she cries when she sees me and we have to sit in the car and snuggle for 20 minutes before I can get her back into her car seat.  So sweet, I know!  Yeah, so that has been a little rough, but its great too!  Now I have so much free time to follow my passion of being a writer totally unencumbered by the kids or stuff I have to do at home or thoughts of my baby sobbing in someone else’s arms while I self publish crap blog content!  Totally freeing having this time to pursue my own interests! Hahah!

Oh look they are unlocking the doors (Thank God)!

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Good afternoon Dad of a girl in my younger daughter’s class.  I know I have spoken with you pretty much every day for the last three years, yet I still do not know your name.  I keep meaning to look it up in the family directory when we get home from school, but every time I have tried someone has pooped in their pants on the way home or yells at me about the continued absence of chocolate milk in their lunch box and then I forget again (I don’t know why, just terrible memory I guess!).  

Eight months ago, when our daughters were still in Pre-K, you asked me my own name. I was taken aback at the time and too flustered to reciprocate in asking you your own first name.  In hindsight, I realize this is because I had been content to refer to one another as A’s Mom and B’s Dad.  However, now the moment has passed (like, really passed) and I feel that it would be rude to ask for your first name unless I could think of a good enough excuse (“Hi, I am so sorry but I was in a minor car accident and experienced some selective amnesia!  I know, so wild, right?  Anyway, remind me of your name again…”)  So now we will just continue on in this limbo…you, addressing me by my first name.  Me, boldly maintaining eye contact and yet never using your own name, not once!  Detente.

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Good afternoon, Mom of son in my older daughter’s class!  I have always liked your son, based on that one interaction I had with him while reading to the class on my daughter’s birthday three years ago.  He seemed bright, energetic without being spastic, quirky, and inquisitive without being annoying — no mean feats for a first grader of any sex/gender identification!  I have always secretly harbored a hope that my daughter would break with this weird stereotype and have a male best friend, namely your son.  They would build tree forts after school and play soccer and space dragons together at recess and ignore people who thought it was weird that they were best friends.  

But alas, it was not to be.  My daughter firmly went the route of befriending only other girls who wanted to play space dragons, and even though she occasionally plays prison tag (I hope to God they don’t know how bad that game sounds to us adults) with your son they are not in platonic best friend land.  So, I continue to hope.  I have no idea where you guys live in town, or where you are sending your son for junior high or high school, or if he even knows my daughter’s name.  But maybe, one day, they will ask to have a playdate so they can work on bark fort we are building down by the river (no vans in sight, I promise).