The Great Carpool Kerfuffle

Oh me oh my the trials and tribulations of the lily-white suburbs, the problems faced by those driving mini-vans and high end SUV's are the most trivial non-sense that sometimes i have hard time fathoming the conversations that i am forced to engage in, it baffles my mind as i try to remember that this life is a river and all things must flow through it and there will be an equal amount of pain as there is pleasure, light as there is dark, for to only know one would be to not know the other, of course in my study of what could only be called loony Eastern Mysticism by the card carrying Jesus set i'm sure i make little sense, you see i make the mistake in the Land of Me and I'm Right!! of trying to actually understand and see the other side of the argument, it's a mistake obviously because i should only be trying to prove that i am right!! dammit and nothing more, even if i'm wrong and my bleating and belly-aching has more holes than a moth-eaten Kono flannel shirt, and so i bring to you the Great Carpool Kerfuffle...

It started the first week of the ride-sharing shit show, as a guy who has coached teams and has kids on teams i understand the dilemma, as a coach it would be nice if everyone is on time, as a parent i understand the difficulty in getting a kid to practice (particularly during the evening rush hour), as a coach it also becomes painfully clear that you will have the habitually late and usually the reason they are late is nothing more than they don't give themselves enough time, they don't fucking think basically which i suppose is a pet peeve of mine, i'm not down with the flighty bullshit of the soccer mom and so last week as the I-mac stood waiting for his ride and watching the clock i finally said fuck it! the kid hates being late to practice and is new to this carpool thing (i've always taken him for this very reason) and so i shot the driver a text that said i would just take him to practice myself, of course she didn't get it and proceeded to my house, i explained later via a friendly text Stretch doesn't like being late and gets anxious and stressed so in order to help my kid i just took him, of course the other kids were late but truth be told they were going to be late either way...

(Full disclosure- this is the travel basketball B team, Stretch here plays club soccer at the highest level and is a pretty damn good baller, if he had the time to practice more hoops he'd be playing on the A team, i don't say that as his father i say that as a coach and judge of talent, he's long and lean and built like a old man, the boy plays great defense and gets to the basket at will, the other three kids i've coached and to be blatantly honest, two should have been cut and one is borderline, it's a cash grab by the association to pad the account, the three will be hard pressed to make a team next year...)

So in the afternoon text chain i offered to take the kids to practice, in order to avoid this very thing but of course (we'll call them the Berensteins, yes like the bears) decided she would do it again, except it wasn't her but her hubby, a solicitor who drives a shiny gold Mercedes and voted for the Orange Shitgibbon, he by the way wasn't in the text chain, of course the who and when of the driving was unbeknownst to me until after practice started when i started receiving some angry texts... but i'm getting ahead of myself...

Once again the I-mac and i stood around waiting and watching the clock and then the text came in from Mrs. Berenstein that Mr. Berenstein was outside and where we there or did we leave? what was going on? Mrs. Berenstein is a likable and flighty woman who i'll admit makes me uncomfortable in the way she likes to look at me and seems to find many excuses to hug me for an unsettling long time, i said we hadn't but were standing by the door and no one was there, i proceeded to then text her that i'd just take the I-mac because by this point it was getting late and frankly i was frustrated with the Berensteins inability to get a simple task right... at this point i tossed on a coat and some boots and used my mad driving skills to get Stretch to practice on time, problem solved and time to chill... at least that's what i thought...

Soon the old phone was buzzing with an incoming text from Mr. Berenstein stating that he was quite frustrated with the whole carpool thing, meaning me, and that he had sat outside my house and waited for close to ten minutes and where was my kid and blah blah fucking blah, he stated it looked like no one was home yet there were two cars in the drive, damn near every light in the house on, the fucking Chrimbo tree lights on (and we all know it's a damn fire hazard to leave those on while no one is home) yet what did the brilliant Mr. Berenstein do? he texted his kid and his wife but never bothered to hit the horn or text/call the parent of the house he was fucking sitting in front of... instead he had his wife text me from some function she was at with her other kids (something i didn't know when i told her i'd just take Stretch) hence she was not in direct contact with Mr. Anger Management Issues.

I read his text and replied rather politely that we honestly didn't see anyone outside the house when he said he was out there and that we had the front door open and were looking, i commented that a quick heads up text stating they were heading our way would be cool and that way we'd be on the lookout and with homework and dinner and life in general a little communication would go a long way... apparently this incensed him even more to which he began ranting how i didn't believe he was outside and that i was making this his fault, he then sent me a screen grab of his kid's phone to prove he was out there and began berating me to look at my kid's phone because his kid had texted my kid and that would prove he was there... at this point i was scratching my head at what the fuck this moron was going on about and was debating if my next text would say something like " take your guns and bible and crew cut and Mercedes and wire-rimmed glasses and half ass law degree and shove them straight up your fucking uptight ass you stupid fuck", but in the end i thought i'd be better for Stretch if i didn't do that...

Now allow me to digress, as i said with a small amount of thought this shit ain't hard, the school the practice was being held at was closest to our house yet for some reason he hadn't yet gotten his own kid or the kid who lives two houses over or the other kid who is a bit out of the way but not by more than 3 minutes, if one thinks about it you can make a quick loop and have all the players and be headed in the direction of whichever school but on this night Stretch should have been the last one picked up cuz he was the closest to practice and by picking him up first meant you were backtracking all in order to come back the way you had started, it was the plan of a full-fledged fucking idiot...

And so i went about my night until my phone buzzed again... and again he was ranting that he was more frustrated because he felt i didn't believe him and was making this his fault to which i wanted to ask if he had ever considered psychiatric therapy, he then ranted that he never had to hit the horn or text or call or knock on doors for anyone dammit and that the other kids magically knew when he'd be there, i didn't want to point out that the only reason they were waiting at the door was because he was late as fuck from being a fucking nimrod but you know the whole gas/fire thing, he yammered to look at my kid's phone when he got home and i explained that he turns his phone off at practice so it doesn't ring and that while he's at home he doesn't have free reign with it so he may not have it, at this point i was asking aloud if these people have any fucking hobbies? or interests? could they read a book or watch the fucking telly? but hell man this is America, the real problem is he wanted to, needed to be RIGHT, to WIN gawdammit!!! for shit sake he's a fucking lawyer in a gold Mercedes and i'm a fucking house boy in a leased car it was an insult that i'd even question him!!!

Which leads us to the Wu-Wei, the ebb and flow, and since i had no desire to continue this ridiculous repartee i broke it down in a way that would make him feel slightly better and mildly confused, i apologized for the miscommunication and soothed his ruffled ego by stating the i was not insinuating he was lying or not there, i explained that texting was an impersonal form of communication and that i was not laying blame or placing fault at his feet, i skipped the fact that his inability to communicate or use logic was really the root of the problem and placed as much of the blame as he would like on my shoulders so he could WIN dammit, i explained i'd much rather buy him a beer and hash it out, something i'd be loathe to do and a task that would take every ounce and fiber of my half-assed Buddhist being to undertake without the burning desire to punch him in the face... needless to say after my rather eloquent diatribe i heard nothing... the denizens of the burbs can be a drag... or as Sartre said, "hell is other people"...