Primary School Confidential (18 page)

16

KISS AND DROP

One by one they come through the school gate, often clutching the hand of a tired and grumpy toddler who had to be woken abruptly from a nap. In small groups they gather, seeking shade from the heat of the day beneath the trees. They are probably tired too.

They are dressed in a variety of ways. Some are in gym clothes and have been in them all day. Some are in business clothes. Most are women, mums, though there is the occasional father, looking refreshed and relaxed for some reason.

Welcome to school pick-up time, where the minutes tick by so slowly, you could swear that time is standing still.

Then the bell rings—and all hell breaks loose.

Drop-offs and pick-ups are the very important bookends to the school day.

Drop-offs start with the forgotten, which can include but is not limited to the following:

Depending on the importance of what has been forgotten, you might find yourself hightailing it back home to fetch it. (If, of course, you can find it.) But more likely than not, the forgotten item will remain sitting on the kitchen bench for the rest of the day.

If you are at the beginning of the school year, drop-offs are an interesting time to observe some spectacular tantrums,
as four- and five-year-olds cling to their parents' legs, wailing like banshees as their chubby little fingers are prised away by whoever is on hand.

Those kindy kids! To see a teacher attempt to arrange them into two straight lines is like watching someone try to herd drunken puppies.

I recall the day my firstborn started school like it was yesterday.

We entered a huge hall, filled with weeping women.

‘Oh God, how embarrassing for them,' I recall thinking, before handing my child over to the teacher and fleeing the room in tears. I don't know what came over me. I blame hormones. (I blame everything on hormones, including my recently grown moustache.)

There are other emotional, hand-wringing scenes that can occur when you are dropping off and picking up your kids from school. One I hate almost more than any other is the up-down-up.

The up-down-up is the look some mums will give you. You know the one: the quick once-over that takes in every detail of your personal appearance. The women who give the up-down-up are the ones who invariably have perfectly groomed hair, nice fingernails, sensible ballet flats on their pretty feet, and nothing but cold, hard judgment in their hearts. They get their notes in on time, their kids are always well presented and they gather smugly in terrifying groups.

They fall silent when you race in at the moment the bell rings, with your hair askew, eyes still crusted in sleep gunk and morning breath rancid. They've been up for hours baking organic cupcakes in their Thermomixes.

Now, it is my opinion that it takes all types of playground parents to make the world go round. But this particular specimen really irks me.

I can recall waiting at the school gate just recently, looking at my unshaven legs and wondering whether I had actually crossed into the ape species, when I noticed one of the Up-Down-Ups walking towards me.

Immediately I felt like I was back in high school, and Alexandra Langham, the meanest of the mean girls, was on her way over to me to let me know in no uncertain terms that I was a dead shit.

But, no, this mum just did the up-down-up before gliding on past. I thought I had got away with it (whatever ‘it' was), but then she turned and said in a creepy faux-posh accent, ‘So nice to see you, Kayte.'

I mean, she wasn't even looking at me! She was walking away from me! How could it be nice to see me? I wanted to yell out something to that effect, but then I thought again. After all, who am I to judge? Perhaps that is just the way she expresses herself. Perhaps her need to make me feel like a piece of dog excrement on the bottom of her shoe is born of some deep insecurity on her part.

And that's the thing about school gate politics. You never really know what is going on in other people's lives. For all I know, she might have had some terrible news, or been up all night with a vomiting child. She might have just found out that her husband of ten years has been shagging the twenty-four-year-old from work, the one with the long blonde hair and legs that go on forever. Or, of course, she might just be a rude bitch.

As your child works his or her way up through the ranks of grades, you are no longer obliged to run the gauntlet of the other mums; you can begin to consider the ‘kiss and drop'. The ‘kiss and drop'—boy, is that a game-changer. Once you go there, you will never go back.

You begin by crawling the kerb in your car, inch by excruciating inch, until you reach The Zone.

Once in The Zone, you have two minutes to say goodbye to your kids, during which they suddenly remember everything they forgot (see list above). You may alight from the car while in The Zone, but should you move more than two metres from it, or overstay your two minutes—well, you'd better have a well-paying job to cover the resulting fine. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience.

For me, though, drop-offs aren't the problem; it's the school pick-up where everything turns to a complete shit fight.

The most stressful part of my day had become 3.15 pm. This is the time when I go and pick up the boys from school. It is not stressful because the kids are hot and tired and hungry and bitchy (although that does lend a certain charm to proceedings). No, my issue is with the arsehole parking inspectors who patrol the streets during this time.

I pulled up to collect the kids one day, and there were two parking inspectors in attendance. One walked right up and stood next to my car. Her beady eyes narrowed as she pulled out her iPhone and—get this—set the timer. My beady eyes narrowed as I, too, pulled out my iPhone and set the timer for 120 seconds. We waited. A moment passed. A small trickle of children started to appear, none of them mine.

The parking inspector looked down at her phone then back at me.

I wound down the window.

‘Excuse me,' I said. ‘Are you timing me?'

‘You have one and a half minutes left,' she barked.

At that moment, my son Jack came traipsing through the school gate, meandering along with not a care in the world.

‘GET IN THE CAR QUICKLY!' I yelled.

He turned a shocked little face to me. Poor bugger. But with barely a minute left on the clock by this time, and knowing Harry's habit of dawdling, I was getting panicky. I addressed the inspector once more.

‘Are you telling me that I have to drive off and come back to get my other kid?' I demanded.

‘If you're not gone in forty-five seconds, I will have to book you,' she replied officiously.

I have never despised anyone in my life as much as I despised that parking inspector at that moment. I know she was just doing her job, but I think she would be far more suited to a career in correctional services.

I would be completely shit at being a parking inspector. I would be all like, ‘Oh, don't worry about it, take your time. I know what kids are like . . .'

I asked the parking inspector if she would mind explaining to my son that I had not abandoned him and would be back shortly to collect him. I asked her to comfort him if he became upset when he came out of the gates and saw me driving off with his brother in the car.

‘I won't know which one he is,' she said, watching the timer.

‘That's easy,' I snapped. ‘HE WILL BE THE HYSTERICAL ONE!'

With fourteen seconds to go, she started to frame her shot. That is what they do now. They take a photo so that, if you should dream of contesting the fine, they just produce the photographic evidence of your wrongdoing and tell you to shut up and cough up.

Feeling mightily pissed off, I turned the key in the ignition.

Just then, Harry came through the gate. Catching sight of me, he smiled and waved.

‘RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN!' I screamed out the window.

It was like a scene from a very tense movie. A movie about a desperate mum trying to pick up her kids from school. I would call this movie:
Mum Smack Down
.

Harry started to run.

And then the parking inspector said—she
actually said
to my son: ‘Your mum is about to get into trouble.'

‘I AM NOT ABOUT TO GET INTO TROUBLE!' I yelled out the window. And as the door shut behind Harry, and with no time left on the clock, I pulled out of the line. As I drove off, I did what any sensible, mature lady would do. I flipped her the one-fingered salute. But I did it so she could not see it. Because she still had the camera at the ready, and I am sure there is a fine for flipping parking inspectors the bird.