The fact that I willingly wear wind pants out of the house comes as somewhat of a surprise as I am a usually a very awkward person. Socially and non socially. I have trouble behaving properly in public and I worry often about my appearance and other people's thoughts on my appearance and actions. I always have an answer in my head for every question people will never ask me. Like someone is actually going to come up to me at CVS and ask "Why did you park there instead of over there?" "Or why are you wearing that hat today?" Never fear, though, if they do, I have an answer. And that answer is almost always a lie. Which makes it that much more weird.
I have anxiety. I have crazy thoughts. I am probably suffering from one or more of the following disorders: Manic depression, autism, social anxiety disorder, bi polar disorder, impacted wisdom teeth and irritable bowl syndrome. None of these have been diagnosed by any sort of professional- mostly because I don't trust psychology as a real form of medicine and I just lie to my regular doctor when I see him once a year. "Everything is good, nothing hurts. I have been exercising more, eating better. I only have six drinks a week." Usually all of these things are lies, but I don't like to tell doctors what is wrong because I don't trust them- or the miserable heathens who run the billing department at hospitals. I may also suffer from paranoia.
Knowing all of this, like you now do, try to imagine how awkward it must get when I have to drop off or pick up Av from school- which I have also been known to do in wind pants. Seems like a pretty mundane task, no? I thought the same thing at first but, apparently, there are more social obligations than I had originally anticipated. Dropping a 4-year-old off at school is not like dropping a regular kid off at school. You can't just pull up and let them out of the car. They are little, you have to walk them in- all the way to the classroom. Also, keep in mind that Av's preschool is located within the same building as the town's middle school- where Monica happens to teach- which makes me far from an anonymous parent.
Bringing Av to school in the morning is usually better than picking her up in the afternoon. In the morning people seem to be in more of a hurry to get the kids to school and get on to whatever it is they are doing. An informal observational survey notes that most morning drop off parents are headed to exercise, or are at least dressed like they are headed to exercise, while a lower percentage seem to be heading off to work or are responsible for taking care of another child. I am usually headed back home to take a nap.
Gym moms all seem to have the same attitude. They show up walking all fast in their yoga pants and bright colored Nikes. They say hello to EVERYONE. They talk to the teachers. They smile- a lot. They obey every school rule like they are students and they tell stories. Lots and lots of very boring, very mundane stories. They travel in packs. They have energy. Perhaps the energy and happiness comes from going to the gym and eating right. I am going to say that it is more likely to come from the comfortable amount of money their husbands bring in. It is a lot easier to smile all day if you don't have to worry about paying bills and the stresses of going to work every day. Still, though, make sure to only shop at Whole Foods and LL Bean and preach to the rest of us- totally unsolicited- about how important it is to eat right and live a natural lifestyle. I love cheese, lady, and I'm not apologizing for that, either.
The working parents don't talk to anyone. They rush their kids in, give them hugs and leave. I typically look at these people, most of them men, and wonder to myself three things. 1. What does that guy do for work? 2. How much money does he make? 3. Can he get me a job?
A typical day usually begins with me getting pissed off the instant I pull in to the school parking lot. The mini van gym moms have no regard for human life outside of their own, ugly children. They suck at driving and they are worse at parking. They are totally inconsiderate of others and it is a miracle that they don't kill more people. Stop signs and turn signals do not exist. The part that really sucks about it is I can't really express my anger because I see the same people every day and most of them have children in Av's class. Also, I already accidentally taught Av how to give the finger to a cab driver. I didn't think she was paying attention. Oops. Parenting fail number 5,000.
Usually, to avoid the moms, I just pull up front in the area that says "pick up and drop off only" and run Av in. The school staff does not like this. Apparently, it is also a fire lane and is only for vehicles that are occupied and idling, or for school buses. Or crossing guards. Or delivery men. Or pretty much anyone in the entire world who is not dropping their child off at preschool. No one ever seems to be disciplined for parking there except for pre school drop off parents. This is a major point of contention with me. It is winter. It is 11 degrees out. The building isn't on fire and, you know what? If the building does catch fire I'm going to be in that car and out of town way before that fire truck ever shows up. Fact. I have actually never been personally spoken to by anyone who works at the school, but one gym mom did try to get me to move my car once. You can imagine how that went for her.
Her: "Hey. Hi, um, I just wanted to let you know that you really aren't supposed to park there. You should move it they really don't like that."
Me: (Mean mugging the mother) "I'm not to worried about it."
Her: (Looking surprised) "Oh, well I'm just trying to help you. You know, if Cheryl sees that..." (Cheryl is the pre school director- I think)
Me: (Cutting her off and walking away) "Yeah, I'll take my chances with the actual police, thanks for the concern, though."
(Woman stands there looking flabbergasted.)
If Cheryl finds out? What is going to happen? Is she going to write me a ticket from the pre school office? Enforceable via time out or two week TV probation? Is she going to call the police and have my car towed in the four minutes it takes me to drop Av off and walk back down the hall? Mind your own business, lady. Isn't there a 9 a.m. yoga class you have to go to?
Other than the occasional nosy gym mom, I actually luck out in the morning and I usually only have to interact with two people. There is the father of a boy named Dominic, who Av has a crush on. He is older and very nice. We greet one another as we walk by, trade a very occasional story or quip and move on. I am guessing we have similar nap plans.
The other person is significantly less tolerable. He is the father of a girl named Kilee. She is also in Avelyn's class. Her claim to fame appears to be spending the most time in the time-out bean bag chair. Her parents are a white trash stereotype right out of a made for TV movie. Her mother looks like an overweight, busted Christina Ricci and her father looks like he weighs about 96 pounds and spends the majority of his day in basketball shorts and smoking Marlborough Reds. He has a goatee. This is very obviously a high school relationship that went awry after a pregnancy and has continued well in to their early 30's. One day I came to drop Av off and saw Christina Ricci pull away in her Honda, the door panels rattling from the pounding bass of a DMX song. For you older folk, DMX has been missing from the rap scene since about 1999. It's what we used to listen to when we warmed up for junior varsity basketball games. Either way, not real appropriate for dropping your kid off at preschool.
Ricci's husband sees me every morning and offers me a fist bump. A fist bump. Like, are we playing high school baseball together? Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to be the guy who fist bumps fat Christina Ricci's crack head basketball shorts husband? It sucks. I can just hear all the gym moms now, gossiping about the guy in wind pants who won't move his car from the fire lane and how I'm fist bump pals with the DMX- bumping mom's husband. I bet they use really passive aggressive terms like 'strange' or 'odd' to describe us.
Anyway, it is the afternoon pick up where the social anxiety is really put to the test. There are so many more people mulling about, and a lot more of them know who I am than the other way around. Av usually takes off running for Monica's classroom as soon as we get to the lobby and I am left yelling 'Av slow down!' as I chase her through a sea of middle school students and teachers. I do NOT feel comfortable around middle school students. At all. Not one bit. I don't like being around them. It makes me feel strange, uncomfortable and totally out of place. This is nonsensical considering that when I worked at the newspaper my job was to report on education news, which meant I spent four out of five days a week in a school, but that is how I feel nonetheless. For some reason wearing dress clothes made me more confident. I should still wear a shirt and tie every day. Maybe that would cure the psychosis.
As a result of my fears I never enter Monica's classroom. I instead sit like a kid in detention at a desk outside the door. I check my phone. I occasionally read a text book that has been left on the desk. ( I am embarrassingly terrible at 8th grade math). I text Monica and tell her I'm hungry so she will make Av leave and I can get out of there. Despite the fact that almost every single adult in the building, including the principal and school superintendent, know who I am, I still fear that I will be interrogated, arrested or at the very least asked to leave. School security these days, you know?
Inevitably, a conversation will start a day or two later where Monica will describe how awkward I am and ask 'why didn't you say hello to so and so?' Because I don't know who that person is. Apparently I've met them several times. Sorry. My head was probably down. I'm weird like that. Monica's work friends that I do know also like to make fun of how awkward I am, which somehow makes me feel less awkward and more social. I know, it makes no sense. It must be the autism. I can't wait until she is older and I have to start chaperoning field trips or participating in after school activities. I'll probably just crumple like a statue.
***
It has been brought to my attention that I apparently curse too much in my writing. I'll try to clean up my act, but I have always found success in writing the way I speak. Which probably means that I swear too much when I speak too. I enjoy it, though, some words just feel really good to say. You spend so much time censoring yourself around your children or at work sometimes you just need to spit them all out at once. Especially if you have a mental inability to release and overcome frustration or experience random bouts of black out rage like myself. Besides, they are only words, right? I mean, who decided they were vulgar? Probably the same guy who decided God didn't want you to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. Ok. Let's not go down that path. I'll try not to do any of that swearing shit anymore.
Louis CK, as usual, makes my point much better than I did here. NSFW.
