School's Out

Whew. I never knew the end of the semester could come with such a rush. And I don't even go to school.

Last Friday was the last day of my son Leroy's second grade year. It was a good year, too. His record card was good, he's got a crew of buddies who want to get together over the summer and the P.E. teacher still calls him a model student. So why am I pooped?

I feel like I've just left my second job. Managing getting him out of the house, getting him into bath and bad and everything in between is a lotta work. A whole lotta work. The challenge of doing it tag team with your working wife is that you gotta manage the tag teaming on top of it. Someone's gotta keep track of whether the field trip form was returned, and who's attending the teacher's meeting and whether his library book is in his backpack to be returned to school. Oh yeah, today's kids get to bring a snack to school to eat during recess. Leroy helps us remember that in the morning.

Then we're off to school, a three block walk with the (literal) girl next door, a highly sociable kindergartener Leroy's been friends with for two and half years. It's like herding cats.

Walking to school got me involved in a local project to get more kids to walk and bike to school. I grew up in San Francisco, and walking was -the- way we got to school. My momma wouldn't looked at me liked I was nuts if I suggested she had some moral obligation to drive me to school, which was around ten blocks away, over a freeway and through a busy intersection near a BART regional transit station.

I wouldn't have asked her anyway. Heck, I'd miss the fun of walking in and walking back home with my own crew. But that was then. Today, kids more than not are driven in by parents, often on the way to work. It's rush, rush, rush, then drive, drive, drive and then start the school day in the middle of a small traffic jam outside school. It ain't right.

So some parents and I started the Bannon Creek Traffic Tamers to get more kids to walk and bike to school. We held events, put out a newsletter and got teachers to help us bring the message into the classroom. But it was work.

So now, summer is here, and the living is easy. Or easier. Now it's just getting Leroy to his summer camps, two weeks at his school year aftercare, a week at church camp, a week at a rock climbing camp (fake rocks) and a week at a Zoo camp. Nothing much to manage.