I’m hitting the whole alphabet for the A to Z Challenge in April. It’s pretty fun.
When my kids were smaller, and the weather was decent, I would tax my brain and my neck by walking them to school. Trying to hustle them both along and keep an eye on them both (usually one behind me and one in front – hence the neck issue, it was from the swiveling)was often an exercise in frustration, even though I enjoyed that sort of transition time from home to school. We used to play little games and make up songs and act like characters from movies (Trillian, DentArthurDent and Zaphod Breeblebox most often).*
If the weather wasn’t decent then we would drive to school** and that meant that we picked out some songs to play and howl along with*** while we were in the great big line of cars waiting to drop kids off at school. And that’s where the title of this post comes from.
I used to tell the boys that if we wanted to figure out how old the parents of the other kids were, I should wait until they were walking up toward the school and then blast Spirit of the West’s Home for a Rest. The ones who stopped in their tracks, listened, then waited until the song picked up and then danced their way into the school – those parents would have a maximum range from their Aunt Ange’s age to their Uncle Dave’s age, and they would most likely be between my age and Aunt Neece’s.
We never did run the experiment**** but we always had a grand laugh bellowing along to the song and imagining all those dancing parents on the way in to school. Can you imagine how fun that would have been?
Feel free to dance along at home:
*I still walk my youngest to school most days and we have grand conversations and we goof around. I get those sort of times with my oldest son when we drive to appointments and the like. That’s one of the oddest transitions I have noticed about parenting lately. I used to have to take them everywhere with me and now that they are older, they can stay home by themselves more often. That is freeing in a way but I miss those in-between times, the chats in the car, the goofing around while we wait in line-ups, the foolishness of riffing on something odd we all noticed going on at the store. I don’t miss having to juggling their moods, my mood and crowds at stores and I don’t miss having to organize every part of my day around naptime/snacktime/school time, but it is strange to realize that some parts of parenting are largely behind me.
**Well, we always walked to school, in all kinds of weather, up until my eldest was in Grade 2 and we got a second car.
***Our family all follows the rule that YaYa Vivi Walker told to Siddalee ‘If you can’t sing it good, sing it loud!’
****We always think up fun sort of experiments like this. Now I’m thinking we should actually do some of them 😉
PS – Next weekend will be Spirit of the West’s final shows. I wish them well and I hope that Mr. Mann’s can find some ease from his health issues in his retirement. Thank you for the music, Spirit of the West. <3