5. Jamie
I should give some credit where it’s due – Jamie himself is the least of my problems. At least he’s the one kid on the soccer team with the sense to go get help when Pete fractured his arm at practice, instead of just sitting there and whining like the rest of the morons.
It’s his mother, Suzanne, who makes me want to just turn this car around and drop her kid off at the bus station across town. Twice now, Suzanne has skipped her turn driving the kids to the game, claiming that her corporate job is going late. Here’s an idea, Suzanne: maybe don’t sign up for the carpool if you live all the way in Hinsdale and you don’t even have the goddamn time to drive.
4. Daniel
My biggest regret in this trip is letting Daniel sit behind me. Every five minutes, he keeps twisting his feet into my seatbelt or kicking the back of my seat until I yell at him to cut it out. Then, when his feet stop moving, the verbal fusillade starts.
“How much further? Can we stop at Burger King? I’m cold, can we turn down the AC?” The complaints or kicking keep coming until he gets all tuckered out from one thing and returns to the other. Thus, the cycle continues. If his dad wasn’t also Pete’s science teacher next year, I swear we’d already be on I-85 heading home.
3. Sam
While his mom did warn me that Sam might be homesick, I guess I underestimated him. Now, for the first ten minutes, I was fine with Sam just kind of sniveling quietly to himself in the backseat. Then he apparently worked up the courage to make a break for it, because a few minutes after I get on the highway, he opened his fucking door. I have to pull over to the side of the interstate before he can squirm out and land me in jail for child endangerment.
How homesick could you possibly be, Sam? You’re in the fifth grade and you can’t go to a soccer game without a parent in your line of sight? Honestly, the only reason I didn’t turn the car around right then and there is that the break gave me a chance to switch Daniel with Jennifer M. so I could finally get a break from the tapping.
2. Both Jennifers
Jennifer M. and Jennifer J. are the most spoiled children I’ve ever met. They spent the first half of the trip gossiping loudly about who is the poorest student of the class and deciding who they would invite to their shared birthday party based on that. When I informed them that no, I would not be providing them with Voss water and that they should have brought their own water bottles, apparently they were so outraged they wrote “Help!” on my windows with their lipstick.
I swear, if the officer who eventually pulled us over hadn’t thought it was funny and let me off with a warning for speeding, they would be heading home in the police cruiser while the rest of us went on.
1. Pete
So, after all of this, you’d think I’d at least be driving my own son to his own goddamn soccer game? Well guess fucking again. Pete remembered at the last minute that he had a big science project due tomorrow, so here I am, driving the rest of these ungrateful brats without him.
What was that, Daniel? You have to pee? That’s it – you can pee at your mother’s house because we’re turning around right now.
I knew I should have signed Pete up for karate.
