Jane Goodall in the Car Pool Line

The car pool line has grown tiresome. I know I have complained about sitting in it for a half an hour twice a week for the entire school year, but the truth is, some of my best blogs were written in the car pool line. Long hand. In a spiral notebook I purchased on clearance at Target for twelve cents. Beat that!

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I leave my house and park in the car pool line right before 2pm, and I tend to recognize the same cars, vans, and SUVs on the same schedule. There is the older Asian man in his red subcompact car who takes a nap while he waits for school to finish. And the Muslim woman with her brood of toddlers and pre-school children shrieking in the back of the mini-van. The PTA moms with all those magnets identifying their children’s interests. The mom in the 1980’s conversion van, who waits in the line with her teenage high school drop-out unwed mother daughter, both of them smoking cigarettes while her mixed race grandbaby sleeps in the car seat.

Normally I crack a window or two, scoot my seat way back, and write in my notebook until I notice tail lights glaring red in front of me. I am able to concentrate on what I am doing and tune out the cars and their drivers around me. If a mom in the car next to me is chatting on her cell phone, I close the driver's window and open the two windows on the passenger side, so I still get fresh air, without all that hot air.


Except I couldn’t do that yesterday. It was 82 degrees, and I refused to let my car idle for thirty minutes, even for that precious, life-affirming air conditioning. So instead of eating up my premium gas and ruining the environment for my future grandchildren, I opened all four windows, just in case the wind decided to pick up and dry off my sweat. I wish I could drive around in a bathing suit.

I was hot. I was uncomfortable. I couldn’t concentrate on what I wanted to write. I was trapped in my car next to a Chevy Tahoe, driven by a Barbie mom. So instead of writing what I wanted, I studied her closely and recorded her actions, like a gorilla in the mist:

She is an attractive woman, in that Miss Hawaiian Tropic/Girls Gone Wild kind of way: overly processed, bleached blond hair, stick straight from her dark roots to her split ends. Her skin is roughly the color of a tangelo, and her sunglasses are oversized. I am pretty sure she stole them from my grandmother in 1977. She is very busy texting, one finger at a time, so as not to ruin her French manicure. Her typing at home probably looks just like her texting on her Blackberry.

Next to her in the passenger seat is a baby, presumably hers. It has red baby hair and is unable to speak fluently in English, instead making a bunch of gargling baby sounds. It appears to be in the ten to fourteen month old category. It is doing what babies at that age like to do. It is crawling around on the front seat, touching buttons and putting its mouth on everything.

The Barbie mom does not appreciate the baby’s actions, which are distracting her from her slow, methodical texting. So she mildly protests, her words tainted with a heavy Southern accent.

“Stop,” she says to the baby. “Don’t.”

The baby either does not understand or does not care, as it continues its moving about, at one point even crawling over the seat back before plunging face down into the back seat area. The woman grabs the baby by its arm, appearing more annoyed. “Now, quit, I told you,” she says. “Do you want a spanking? Do you want to get back in your car seat?”

The baby does not want either of these things, but is unable to clearly express its dislike of the options, so it cries instead. The crying gets the mother’s attention. She puts down the phone and says to the baby, “You are a pitiful thing.” The mother places the crying baby on her lap, which the baby finds amusing. Its crying turns to mild whining and whimpering. Then it begins to pound on the steering wheel, slapping the leather and occasionally making the SUV honk. The baby is both frightened and delighted by this noise. The mother appears bored now that she is unable to text.

The baby grows tired of this activity and again starts to fuss. At this point, the Barbie mom is looking right at me looking right at her. She makes a face at me and rolls up her tinted windows, sealing off the car’s interior and totally obscuring my view. She starts the engine, and proceeds to pollute the environment for my grandchildren. Show’s over.

I am not judging how this Barbie mom chooses to spend her time in the car pool line. I use my time for creative outlets. Some people use it for resting or interacting with others. Some people expand their minds through books or music. Some people use it to get organized or be productive. Some people take a moment to appreciate the air, the clouds, the leaves on the trees. The one thing we all have in common, besides waiting for our children to exit the school building, is that we are all trapped in the car pool line and trying to make the best of it. So, please don’t misunderstand me, Barbie mom. I don’t care that you text slowly or dangle your baby by its arm. I merely find you fascinating to watch, since unfortunately the noises you and the baby make are distracting enough that I am unable to concentrate on recording minutiae that doesn’t involve you. I’ll have to save that for the next car pool line.