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Getting The Girl Kids To School

It's a simple thing, getting the kids to school. You wake them up, they dress themselves, make their bed, you feed them and you transport them to their institute of learning.

1. OK. Wake them up. This is similar to climbing mount Everest. Specially the cold reception you get from your little diddums, who intensely resents having her dream about some hottie interrupted half way through, and then also have to get out of her warm coccoon and into a frosty winter morning chill. We bribe them with warm tea and sing about the lovely summery day that will soon break through the frozen mist outside.

2. They dress themselves. I dunno about that. They normally sit on their bed, mourning the sad fact that they are faced by a day at school, and life sucks, and it's cold. And their clothes are all wrong. Even if it's a uniform, it's still all wrong. Why, they cry; why me! Eventually it's only Mom with extremely aggressive and threatening gestures that convinces them that it may be prudent to postpone their mourning to the next morning.

3. They make their bed. Well, they do, but not at this, correct, time, but usually while you are revving the car in the driveway, shouting like a banshee out the car window that "You're going to make your sister late again!" I mean, like, why make the bed if you're just going to get back into it tonight?

4. You feed them. At least, you would if they would just get their unresponsive bodies to the breakfast table. The only way to get them there at anywhere near the correct time is to threaten them with the most diabolical, the most cold, heartless and savage punishment: NO TV. They beg for a hiding. Please! Anything but no TV! But we are resolute. Yes, folks, desperate times call for desperate measures.

5. Transport them to school. Now, you would think that any transport would be better than walking to school on a cold frosty morning. But no, our 1988 VW is the ultimate "Don't be seen in this car!" vehicle of non-choice. I even stuck a LiZZard sticker on the back. This only made it worse. They reckoned I was "masquerading" as a surfer. Like they don't, with their Billabong tops and O'Neil school bags. And don't drop them near the school gate, where other kids may see their shame, as they ride in this relic from the Neanderthal era of transport. They must be dropped down the road, so they can walk the last bit, to spare them this trauma.

As they dissappear into the school, a wave of uncontrollable calm washes over you. It is Mission Impossible Accomplished.

Until tomorrow.

Learn more about this author, Duncan Kelly.
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