Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Collecting Kids


Here’s the thing about having three children in the city:  you can spend an hour picking kids up and you still have more to retrieve. As soon as I’m done distributing kids to their various destinations, I have to begin re-collecting them again. It’s a Sisyphean enterprise, and that’s on a fair weather day, to say nothing of when it’s pouring rain or cold as a witch’s teat or a crushing heat wave. 

Maybe this is one of those parts of parenting that's infinitely easier in the suburbs -- still the same distributing of children liek newspapers and still the same re-collecting them again later, only that the process must be expedited, and more comfortable, because you're in a car. Instead of transferring trains twice, then hoisting my fat ass up three flights of stairs to get to the walk up playdate, lugging my stroller clumsily up the stoop stairs and cursing under my breath, I'd merely beep my horn, almost effortlessly and roll down my window. 

"Get in, champ," I'd say, just like people do in commercials. 

Sounds absolutely dreamy.