No, How About YOU Come Get The Kids?

When other moms do not obey the secret rules that govern our tribe, it makes me have to send snippy text messages to my sister and then compose blog posts about it.  And then nobody wins.

The other day, Laura had plans to play at a friend's house and then have her for a sleepover at our house.  This girl is new in school this year, having moved down from the north part of the county.  She is very sweet and Laura is in love with her.  New Friend's mom was going to pick Laura up and take her to their place for a couple of hours, then I was going to retrieve both girls in the early evening for the sleepover portion.

That morning, the mom left me a voice mail explaining that she had to go, unexpectedly, and do something at work, so she couldn't come get Laura to play, and that they still wanted to have Laura over, but that her husband "isn't good with directions" and couldn't come get her.  I texted the mom and said I would drop Laura off.

Yes, you're saying, there are too many parts of this plan.  I should have canceled the non-sleepover portion, but Laura really wanted to visit her friend's house, and we got carried away.

So Hank and I drive Laura over to her bud's house and I make polite chit chat with the dad.  He says his wife will be home any minute, and I think, "Great, so she can drive the girls over later."  Because in my mind, my doing the drop-off meant that we would swap places and she would bring them for the sleepover portion of the evening.

You see,  most everyone I know obeys the commandment: Thou Shalt Share the Labor of Child Transportation.  We never talk about it, but everyone spends so much time shuttling kids around, you try and minimize the driving for your fellow moms when you can, and you expect the favor will be returned to you.  You automatically divide up the transportation when organizing playdates that require driving, you rotate collecting kids from after-school activities, etc.  Fine.

The way this works out though, since it's the South, is that we can't be exactly frank about it all the time, in a "You do this and I'll do that" way.  To be in truly top-notch compliance with the unwritten code, you have to volunteer to do all the driving and act like you want to and you don't mind, in fact you would enjoy it.  Then you count on the other woman's good breeding to rescue you, because she will insist that no, she wouldn't dream of your doing that, and she'll just swing by your house on the way to somewhere and it is not a problem at all.  So it gets divided evenly, but only because you both practically begged each other to get to do all the driving yourself.

Yes, it seems indirect and complicated, but I know women who excel at this maneuver and have turned it into a form of beautiful theater.  The mom of Hank's carpool buddy and I once performed an impromptu play entitled, I Beg of You To Inconvenience Me, It Is No Inconvenience, I Promise.  It concerned one trip home from preschool, and it was acted out over two phone calls while we were in separate vehicles on a rainy highway.  Oh my, the protestations! The highs and lows of emotion!  She is a true artist.  When it was over, we both felt the satisfaction of a job well done.

Of course, with close friends, you can dispense with some of the ceremony.  I can call Normal Neighbor or Pretty Neighbor and be like, "I'm lying on my dining room bench and I have no intention of moving.  Can you get Laura from chorus when you get your kid?" But with new friends and acquaintances?  This throwing-yourself-on-the-grenade-of-child-transport is required.

Which brings me back to Laura's new friend.  So Hank and I take Laura over there and then we run our errands and doodle around purchasing pumpkins and when we get back home, I am tired.  The radiation treatment isn't slowing me down much, but it does some.  And I think the daily car trips to go get treatment have made me a little, um, sensitive to driving.  As it rolled towards the time when I'd said the sleepover could begin, I thought, "Surely other mom is going to volunteer to bring the girls over?"  I decided I would text her to jog her into action.  So I said:

I better come get those girls. Are they about ready?

By which I meant, why don't you drive the girls over here?  And to which she was supposed to respond, "I'll run them over there."  But what she actually responded was:

Yes they r playing outside.

Uh oh.  She missed her line.  Now what?  I try a more direct approach:

Okay, Hank and I will saddle up. 

Now, that meant, "Okay, I have a four year-old who I have to load up and bring with me and we haven't been home all that long and I'm tired and also I'm not sure my daughter can be friends with your daughter because it's too hard to turn left into your subdivision and you have no small children so could you please get into the car?"  Could I have been any clearer?  But that message was not clear to her, because she did not respond at all.

Then, Reader, I felt annoyed.  I am not proud because it was not a lovely emotion.  I am breaking the code by confessing it here to you.  But I texted my sister:

I am in a text-message game of chicken with another mom over kid drop off.  She is not getting the hint.  She's breaking a secret rule!

Then I waited about five minutes and then Hank and I really did saddle up and go over there.  I was fuming slightly the whole way.  Hank and I stepped into their foyer to wait while the friend got her stuff, and that's when the mom told me that their son was also having a sleepover, so they would have a child-free night, how wonderful!

Then I was truly annoyed and envious, and feeling like a super, robo King Kamehameha bitch on top of it.

Then I took all the kids and went home and we had a perfectly lovely evening.

I should say that the little girl is a doll and the mom is a nice lady.  I'm sure I will come to like her.  But, you know, the secret rules.  The secret rules!