Addicted To Carpooling

This year I've joined the ranks of parents with children at more than one school, in opposite directions, neither in walking distance from our house.  I have always been a huge fan of carpools and assumed that other parents shared my carpooling mantras:

1. Thou shalt fill the car with as many children as possible from neighboring houses.

2. Ideally, one parent shall drive an entire week, and then have a week or more of rest.

3. Thou shalt not determine the carpoolers based on your children's love or hate of the kids.

4. Thou shalt certainly refuse to carpool with children that you yourself deem bratty or chronically late.

5. Thou shalt take children early and pick them up late so as to maximize your tax dollars.

6. But not so late that thou art the last car in line.

I had no trouble arranging a new carpool for Finn, who'll be starting his first year at the junior high.  But the twins, who are still at the elementary school, proved more problematic than I had anticipated.  For seven years Chatty Mom and I carpooled effortlessly with six boys in tow.  She'd drive one week and I would drive the next.  If she was running late at the doctor, I'd bring her boys to my house until she was back.  It was the perfect situation, but it shattered when she moved.

Last week I emailed a friend with two boys about the possibility of carpooling.  I'd love to, she wrote, but let me check with the others.

Others?  I was thrilled!  If there were two other families involved and we drove by weeks, I'd only have to drive one week out of every month.  It would be like having a mini-vacation.  Sure, I'd still have to deal with work, and driving to guitar, soccer, drums, and cooking nutritious meals and maintaining the laundry, but still.  It seemed too good to be true.

It was.  Hours later I got an email back: My carpool does not want to add anyone else.  I am sorry!!

Ye gods, did these unknown carpoolers not know Rule #1: that efficient carpooling requires you to fill the car as full as safely possible with dirty youngsters?  Weren't they affected by the price of gas?  Didn't they realize that I am the essence of fabulous carpooliness, that I fill in on short notice when needed, that I bring food when a fellow carpooler is sick, that I need this carpool?

Then it occurred to me that perhaps the neighbors were well aware of the rules, and were invoking Rule 4.  Maybe they know that Porter has an unhealthy obsession with parakeets.  Or that Drew sometimes smells and occasionally utters nonsense words.

Maybe they don't want to carpool with me.

That's a possibility, but I'm not wasting my time being paranoid about it.  I bet they're just not smart enough to realize I'm the carpooling queen.  I'll give them some time to reconsider, but not much.  School starts in a week.

This is an original Deep South Moms Blog written by Anne Glamore.  She writes at Tales From My Tiny Kingdom, where she regales readers with stories about raising three sons, like the one about dealing with the tooth fairy and trying to keep her cool in adverse circumstances.