Well, it happened. Despite my best intentions, bending over backwards, doing flips and dips and driving in the right lane, I have been booted from my private school carpool.
I’m not alone. Another family got the “goodbye” call as well. The reason? One child cannot handle being with so many other children. Plus, probably a plethora of private school politics I cannot possibly fathom. Sometimes, you’re just not one another’s kind of people. Anyway, the “don’t mess with the carpool” statement I made in my first carpool post has been undone: someone messed with the carpool.
So, we will all suck it up. Form a new carpool. A better carpool, damn it. And, in honor of that, I’ve adapted a popular twelve step program’s Twelve Traditions as the new carpool’s parameters. This is not meant as blasphemy. I just figure, if these Traditions could hold a sprawling, self-regulated organization in such good stead, they’d more than do for my measly little carpool.
The Twelve Traditions of Carpool (by Jenny)
Our common welfare shall come first; personal transportation depends upon carpool unity.
For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—the driver.
The only requirement for carpool membership is the desire to stop driving… daily.
The carpool should be autonomous.
The carpool has but one primary purpose—to drive the children to school.
The carpool ought never endorse, finance, or lend the carpool identity to any other carpool.
Every carpool ought to be fully self-driving and insured.
The carpool should remain forever nonprofessional, but we might employ special drivers in emergencies.
The carpool, as such, ought be organized only through cell phone and email.
The carpool has no opinion on outside issues. Unless it involves sirens.
The carpool’s public relations strategy is based on attraction and neighborhood convenience within a ten block radius, rather than promotion.
Safe driving and a clean car is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions; ever reminding us to place principles before our children’s personalities.
