I get myself all ready to go: no socks but decent lightweight sneakers, sports bra, a pair of my youngest son's old team lacrosse shorts, and an alcohol-sponsored t-shirt with its bottom and sleeves hacked off. I pull back my hair, and, by gawd, I look absolutely stunning for a sweaty, kind of old person. Then, I sit down and play games on my phone until her text arrives. I know it will be soon because they have been gone with the U-Haul for about four hours.
At 2:05 p.m., my phone makes a noise and vibrates slightly. "We're back," she texts. I know she and her friend and their small crew are trying to eat sub sandwiches, so I text back that I am going to swing through the post office near the high school to mail some bills. I jump into my car and start heading the mile or so down the street to mail bills and other critical stuff that may or may not be overdue.
Just as I near the turn to go down the street to the post office, I notice a back-up of cars from two different directions, all trying to merge into one lane. I can see the right turn I need to take, but I am completely blocked from reaching it by people attempting to go straight and merge into the street that goes straight. Even if I were to make it to the road I need, throngs of teenagers are streaming through the streets, ignoring crosswalks like some kind of crazy giant ant invasion. These kids are everywhere!
Oh, shit. Oh, damnation. Oh, fuck my life.
The high school and middle school at the top of the hill where I am trapped has just dismissed all of its students from the very first day of school for the year. Kids are leaking from the buildings, and parents are madly in line trying to find their poor babies so that their offspring won't melt in the blistering heat.
I finally make it to my turn-off, head away from the mayhem, drop my bills off at the post office, then continue toward my daughter's house, which just so happens to be about one hundred yards from another middle school in the town. There are more students clinging to sidewalks and crosswalks, and, even worse, since they have a head start on me, they have already infected the center of town.
I finally arrive at my daughter's house after twenty minutes, a trip that is about two miles around in total. Even though I've been inside my air conditioned car with the fan blasting, I am sweating it out. I burst through her door and don't even bother with informal nor formal hellos."Rugrats," I say, still in a serious state of shock and swearing under my breath, "I forgot about the rugrats today."
I stare blankly and shake my head a little, more like twitching movements. You see, I don't go back to school until the following week (which is now, I guess, but it's then while I am typing this), so I think this whole "school starts, watch out for children" thing is somewhere tucked into my Denial File. I don't know. Maybe I'll ask Dr. Who when I see him (at school next week ... today).
