Honestly I wish I was writing about crappy attempts at flirting or desperate attempts at getting a phone number. But no, I’m talking about collecting my children from school at the end of their work day.

I’ve read the complaints on Facebook and read funny articles of the terrible drivers who can’t seem to figure out how the drive by and jump thing works, and I gotta tell you from first hand experience…. None of them are wrong. The parent drop off/ pick up lane is one hot mess.

I know I’m lucky that I have been able to avoid it for so many years. But now that I’m here I’m not sure how to handle this crappy set up. We can’t do school buses because my boys would have to ride on separate buses. Dumb, I know, but because the way the special needs buses work here, my boys would have to leave our home separately.

One would have to wait at a bus stop while the other would have to wait at home, and heaven knows how stressed my boys would be wondering if the other brother made it on his ride.

So here I am with my beautiful daughter in the pick up lane wondering when is the best time to show up for this line? The first day of pick up we came 30 min early and we were 60 cars back. So the next day we came 45 min early and were still 50 cars back. How early are these people getting here?

Today I had to run some errands before getting my school aged kids, so we ended up at the school 50 min early… And my daughter and I were still 30 cars back. These cars ahead of us must be getting to this elementary school over an hour early! Just to sit in line in a parking lot… To pick up there kid?

Any way you shake this, at least an hour of my day will be used sitting in my car with my daughter telling me to move our car up and giving me back seat directions. But honestly I can’t blame her, this is stupid and shouldn’t take this long.

What would you do? Get to the school early and wait, or show up at a reasonable time and wait?