I will miss many things about Kindergarten, but carpool is not one of them. If you get there half an hour early, there will still be two cars in line ahead of you. If you get there five minutes before the bell, you will be in line a block away from the school. If you leave the car running, you are destroying the environment. Turn the engine off and you freeze or melt. It interrupts baby nap time as evidenced by the tiny wails of misery coming from the other cars. Toddlers express their frustration at having to be strapped into a non-moving vehicle. Nobody likes carpool. It works as efficiently as possible because everyone follows the rules. Well, almost everyone. We have one parent at our elementary school who jumps to the front of the line and gets out of their car to claim their child the minute they arrive instead of waiting in their cars in the line like everyone else. This parent is not a doctor, nurse, police officer or fire fighter. If it it was, everyone would understand the inability to wait. This parent is one of the people who ended up on Gilligan’s island. You know the song, “With Gilligan, the Skipper too, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann, here on Gilligan’s Isle.” This parent has the kind of job that would allow them to show up two hours late for a meeting and people would all smile and claim that the person was right on time. There are parents and grandparents in the carpool line who are using their entire lunch hour to pick their child up and drop them off somewhere before they rush back to work. They follow the rules and wait their turn. Why couldn’t this parent? I know that the impatient parent was aware that they were annoying people. I watched other parents giving this person the stink eye day after day. At class parties and on field trips, this person’s carpool behavior ALWAYS came up in discussions. Ironically, this person is thought of very highly thought of in our community. Anyone in their neighborhood would have carpooled with them. They just aren’t making any friends in the carpool line. Does this parent not realize that they are setting a bad example for their own child? I am thrilled that I won’t have elementary school carpool next year. Hopefully, the impatient parent will have gained patience over the summer.