Road of Life Is Paved with Car Pools

I was driving the car pool to play practice. As we stopped to pick up one of the riders, his sister came outside their house to say she didn’t know where he was.
“Do you think he’s still at school?” I asked.
“Mom, he’s not here. Let’s go,” Colleen said for the back of the car.
“Go ahead, my mom will bring him,” the sister yelled. I suggested a few more alternative locations for the brother. After hearing, “I don’t know where he is, my mom will bring him,” a few more times, followed by a persistent “Let’s go, she said he’s not here” from Colleen, I drove off.
As we left, I began my car pool lecture.
“Do you think that young man’s mother will be happy to drive him, when he could have had a ride with us?”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make?” Colleen wondered.
“What difference does it make? It makes a lot of difference,” I said in a volume-escalating tone. “What if he missed his ride just because he was in the bathroom? No parent likes to drive all over tarnation, taking kids someplace when it’s not their turn to drive. The reason parents arrange car pools is so they don’t have to drive all the time. You should be more considerate of your parents who are also chauffeurs.”
“I feel a column coming on,” said Colleen’s friend Michelle, who was also sitting in the back seat.
I figured she was right. So I continued writing out loud as I drove down Center Street.
You are in too many activities in too many places. (Don’t I sound like an old fud?) In order to get to most of them, you have to be driven by parents.
Since I’m a parent, I think I’m qualified to say we aren’t crazy about doing all this driving.
When you are a passenger in a car pool, remember a few things.
First, be appreciative. Chances are good when a mother picks you up that she already has made several stops and starts in her car.
Her nerves are on edge because another equally frazzled driver with a carload of soccer players or ballet dancers cut in front of her, which made her slam on her brakes, which caused her 2-year-old, who always climbs out of his car seat, to smash against the dashboard.
But she can’t stop to console him because, if she did, your car pool would be late.
After you are deposited, she still can’t go home, put her feet up and drink a diet cola.
By this time, the Brownies have finished meeting and she has to pick them up, then stop at the grocery store and the cleaners before going back to get your group.
Another thing: Never get upset when your ride is late. The driver is not tardy because she was trying out new lipstick colors at the makeup counter of a discount store.
It’s more likely that when the driver was all set to leave the house, she couldn’t find her car keys or her kids’ shoes or her kids.
Or maybe one of her kids threw a fit because he didn’t want to leave in the middle of She-Ra on TV. Or the phone rang, or a diaper suddenly needed changing.
When you get in the car, say something pleasant. A woman who has been driving up and down hills and in and out of driveways, who has been opening and closing car doors and snapping and unsnapping seat belts, and mumbling to herself, “Be patient, practice patience, you’ll get through this,” isn’t sure she wants to make conversation, or even listen to other people making conversation.
Finally, I said to Colleen, who was trying to keep the baby quiet, to Michelle, who had Mike asleep on her lap, and to Molly, who was trying to convince Pete that she wasn’t sitting on his seat belt, “Remember to take full advantage of all these dancing lessons, acting classes and team sports, because it is just the training you will need to prepare you for life.
A life like mine, one in the car.
November 19, 1986