THE DECISION - PART ONE

FIFTEEN MONTHS EARLIER:

The Honda Odyssey that was the FINAL indignity.

Let me explain what a typical L.A. afternoon was for me and how it led to my personal physical contact with an American-Made Japanese vehicle.

My son and daughter were in the highly gifted magnet program in the L.A. school system. This got them a smaller class size and a more demanding curriculum and, at least in elementary school, a school that we liked better.[1] But it also meant that after second grade they were no longer in the school that was two blocks down the street. They were bused to the magnet school.

When you apply to the magnet program, you’re assigned to the first school that has an opening no matter where it is. My son’s elementary school was about eight miles away. My daughter’s middle school was about nine miles away. Every morning my son would have to be taken two blocks to the school down the street to get his elementary school bus. My daughter would have to be taken about four miles to where her middle school bus picked her up. [2] Oh. And this bus stop was in front of a school in the morning and in the afternoon they dropped the kids off across the street from the school --- in front of a motel. Yes. MOE-TELL. Sort of a creep-central motel, too. Why was this a good idea? I don’t know. I called the bus central office and they said:

“Well, we haven’t had any problems before.”

So there you go.

Anyway…

Both buses gathered the respective younger McLaughlin at the same time in the morning. That meant that my wife took my daughter and I took my son. Since I had been a freelance writer/producer[3] and working out of the house, I picked them both up, but their release times[4] were staggered. The boy got out of school at two-thirty and the girl at three.

I’d have to pick up my daughter at her middle-school bus stop, then run back home to the school that was two blocks away to pick up my son where HIS bus dropped him off at the school there.

If you’re confused, try living it.

Part of the problem is that you had to remember all the school names. Connor was dropped off at Wilbur School so he could go to Welby Way. Lauren was dropped off at Sutter so she could go to Lawrence. In the afternoon I got Lauren across the street from Sutter at the Red Motel Six Roof Sun Microtel or whatever it was called and then romped my way to Wilbur to get Connor at Wilbur where the Welby Way bus dropped him. The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.

To add to this fun and frivolity, there was a middle school around the corner from our house called Portola Middle School and each day from about two-forty-five to three, it was impossible to drive down the street let alone get out of the driveway. It would actually start up around 2:30 when the really old people, who I figured were either grandparents or elderly people with a lot of money to spend on fertility treatments and Viagra, began lining up. For a while there was a guy who looked like the President of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post who would bring a lawn chair and a newspaper, set up on my front lawn and read until the kids got out[5]. Those were days I wished I had a sprinkler control inside the house.

The street was fairly narrow to begin with, having been laid out when a Hudson Commodore was the biggest thing on the road. With SUV’s lining both sides, it became about a lane and a half. Add to that the people who did drive-by pick up and you had better get out of the house by two-thirty if you had to be anywhere. Portola Middle School sent its student body of nearly two thousand streaming into the neighborhood and into the streets. It was easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than to navigate Portola Middle School dismissal time.

Sooo, the deal was drive to the motel, get the girl[6], drive to the school, get the boy where his bus had dropped him off and he was on the playground playing handball[7] with his neighborhood friends.

It was September and so we were still shaking down the schedule on this particular San Fernando Valley fall day --- which is to say it was pretty much like a spring day, a summer day or a most of the winter day. The weather’s lovely there as long as you like it the same most of the time. Many people do. To me it’s like wearing the same jacket all the time, except you don’t really need to wear a jacket there, so I guess it’s not like that at all. It’s like a steady diet of tomato soup. I’m sure there are some people[8] who really like it. I get tired of it.

When I got to Wilbur Avenue School, where Connor was supposed to be, they were dismissing late for some reason and the streets were packed. Normally Wilbur’s dismissed for about forty-five minutes before I get there, so I wasn’t used to this particular suburban crush. His bus was not yet there.

Not wanting to fight the traffic, I parked a distance away and my daughter and I walked back to the school.

That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Avoid the traffic and walk a little to avoid a lot of hassle.

Apparently I’m the only one who thought that way.

People double and triple-parked around the school, jockeying for position and blocking school buses, taking school bus spots and parking in the teacher’s parking lot. Honestly, a block away there was plenty of parking, but in front of the school it looked like one of those smash-em-up funny car races in slow motion and without the funny part.

Lauren and I stepped into the crosswalk ONLY after looking both ways[9]. When we were about halfway across, there was a woman in a Honda Odyssey van parked in the red curb[10] right in front of a sign that said “Do Not Park in crosswalks or red curb areas”[11]. I noticed her because she began to pull out. Backwards. Backwards and out. Into the crosswalk. She backed out into the crosswalk while we were in it.

Toward us.

More to come...

Total contents copyright 2009 by Shaun McLaughlin.

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[1] You’ll be hearing more on this subject. Well, you’ll be reading it. Unless you have the audio book.

[2] Go ahead and ask about why we bothered with the bus since we were halfway there anyway.

[3] And that DOESN’T mean that I wasn’t making money.

[4] That’s the way the school referred to it. Not “dismissal”; “release times” – kinda like something you’d see on Animal Planet. Or “Lock Up” on MSNBC.

[5] This guy was picking a kid up and behaving like this and my daughter freaks out when I kiss her forehead in front of her friends?

[6] Since it was far more important to protect her from any potential creepiness.

[7] Not the game your grandfather played. A new school yard game that involved a playground ball and a set of very elastic rules.

[8] By “some people” I mean old people who like tomato soup and who I picture living with lots of cats in a house filled with newspapers dating back to the establishment of the Korean DMZ.

[9] I do this even when I don’t have kids with me. I figure not doing it is tempting Darwinian fate.

[10] In California this means, “Don’t park here!” Well, it really means, “Think about parking here.”

[11] See? It’s just a suggestion. Not a law, really.