The Thing About A Uniform

Over the last couple of years I've done a lot of bitching about the carpool line. Maybe I haven't done it much out here on the interweb, but from the first day ever of my daily date with my car, that line has been a pain in the ass.

It could be worse, true. I've heard horror stories from my friends at the Hot Flashes board and I'm pretty happy that our school makes an effort.

But while they usually succeed spectacularly, they fail in the same way.

Today was free cookie day. The PTA's new fundraiser is cookie sales, and they were handing out free samples.

So I pull up (letting someone who came from the "wrong direction" go in front of me) and get the kids ready for their jump-out. Sometimes it's like I'm a pilot and they're paratroopers.

Anyway, I was happy to see there were FOUR people helping this morning: Two 5th graders and two moms, all in the requisite orange vests of the "Dads on Duty" brigade. Their job is to open the car door, help the smallest kids get out, and then make sure the door is shut. It's handy. It usually works well.

So this morning I pulled up, and I was third in line. See above, where I mentioned there were four people on duty?

The fifth graders took the first two cars, the mom at the end took the car behind me and the mom in the middle...did nothing. She was standing there holding a sign that advertised the cookies, wearing her orange vest, STARING AT THE BACK OF THE TAGBOARD SIGN.

Now if she hadn't had the vest on, I wouldn't be wondering, what the fuck?

But really, was she there to push cookies? There were at least two other people with identical signs on my right, and three moms handing out cookies on my left, so it's not like they needed an extra volunteer.

And she was wearing the vest. Which at the time and place she was, would indicate that she was supposed to do a certain thing, that being: helping my kids get out of the car so as to speed things up for the people behind me, while being overly cheery in that PTA kind of way.

Instead of holding a redundant sign and spacing out.

The fifth graders saw me trying to get her attention and once they were done with the cars ahead of me, they helped my kids get out--while giving PTA Space Case as much of a glare as they dared.

*sigh*

Oh well. Maybe she was just having a petit mal seizure or something. In which case, more power to ya, PTA mom.

On other topics, here's the new haircut. It's actually a mirror image. I forgot to flip it before I uploaded it.

Yeah, I know it looks pretty much the same.