Our car is at the dealer getting fixed ... again ... so I didn't have a car on the first day of school. Miriam's bus came that morning and she went off to school with her beautiful new Tinkerbell backpack. I had been offered a ride to school, because parents were invited to come on the first morning for a while, but I thought I needed to get on my bike and get moving a little. So the night before I cleaned up the dusty, dirty bike. I took wipes outside to the garage and wiped the bike off, which for some reason Chuck thought was funny. So then as soon as Miriam's bus drove away I pulled the bike out of the garage and rode over to her new school, which is pretty close to our house. When I got there I could see the bus pulling into the driveway of the school. So I rode over to where the bike racks were, breaking several rules in the process, and locked up my bike. After reading the school rules this week, I learned that bikes should be walked on campus. Also, I shouldn't have gotten in the way of the man in the car who was in trouble for stopping in the wrong spot to drop off his kid.
Miriam did well that first morning. After saying "Hi, Mom" several times she got down to business, which was talking and singing about the days of the week and months of the year, and dancing to some fun songs. Then the parents were excused. We walked past the "mainstream" kindergarten classes on the way out, where parents were clustered in little chairs around tables, taking notes. I wanted to take notes too, but I guess our teacher figured we knew what was going on already, since most of our new kindergartners came from the preschool. But I had already proved that I didn't know how to get a bike onto campus correctly. I'm planning on taking some serious notes for Back to School Night on Thursday, however.
When I left I went over to the bike racks, only to find out that the gates to the bike rack area were locked with a padlock! What to do. Call a friend for a ride home, or walk home, and then wait to come back at the end of the day for my bike? No way. So I walked into the office and told the lady there that my bike was locked up in the bike racks, and her face broke into a smile and she reached into her desk and pulled out a key for the padlock. She laughed and said, "That's what you get for following the rules." So that was a lot easier than I had thought. I had figured we'd be calling a custodian on the walky talky and waiting til he could come break my bike out, but I took care of it.
13 years ago
