Suburban anthropologists, we are!

So we were amused witnesses today to a prime example of annoying suburban living. At Grace's elementary school, although I usually park and walk to the playground to meet her as she leaves, many moms wait in line in their cars until the custodian opens up a special pick-up lane behind the school. The moms drive into the lane, park, the kids find the appropriate car, and it's a pretty efficient traffic pattern. [It happens in the inverse in the morning, in a different location, for dropoff, which seems to lack much of the aggressiveness of pick-up for whatever reason.]

Except, today, the custodian was gone. No one could find the keys to the gate. This meant that in both directions, moms were lining up as usual, but the gate wasn't open. SUVs and minivans started to stack up. I walked by a very frustrated assistant principal, picked up Grace, and walked back to find that for a block in each direction the streets in front of the school had become unruly parking lots. This was where it gets funny: what happens when entitled suburban mamas find that a. they can't get to their precious darlings RIGHT THIS SECOND and b. every one of their neighbors is driving an SUV as huge as theirs and c. no one has any concern about any car/child/person except her own? The little vingettes were so classic: look, there's Mom Who Wears Her Full-Length Mink to Elementary School slipping her Jag [yes, really] in front of someone's driveway so she can hop out and get her kids on foot. Look at her expression of distaste when she realizes that she can't thread her way through the cars in her high-heeled, impractical boots because cars are parked in the crosswalk! Or look at Fancy Sunglasses Mom in the Range Rover nearly bash her huge vehicle into the SUV in front of her in her determination to be the First One Out, now that she's got her kids! Listen as Mom in Minivan bellows to everyone within hearing range that "Someone should direct traffic!" because, you know, it's not like we're adults doing something that's fairly low-urgency. No, this is High Drama! Check out the speed with which various SUVs are propelled down the street - because, you know, if you're just fast enough, you'll get through! And then there's Mom Who Honks When Forced To Wait [not making this up - one of the dads saw her and rolled his eyes and said, "Jeez, she always does that!"], doing her thing right at the front of the line, because that's how you make keys materialize out of nowhere, you know. Best of all was the slightly perplexed look on the face of the guy who is a stay-at-home-dad and walks to drop-off and pick-up every day. Yes, sad to say, these *are* your neighbors.

We just hung out in the car until traffic cleared, which took about five minutes. I felt sheepish about having stopped by Starbucks' drivethrough on my way to pick Grace up (in my defense, it's pretty cold out, and Peter wanted a snack, and we bought something for Grace), but it felt a lot more cheerful in our car, with our almond whatever bars and our Chai latte. We watched the parade of tense and irritated neighbors and listened to our obnoxious rock music extra loud and then made our way peacefully home.