Carmel High School -- Natatorium Entrance (click to enlarge)
Uh, oh...it's that time of year again. We swimmer parents pretty much rule the Carmel High School drives and parking lots for the 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. practices throughout the year. No one else is up and around at that time so we made our own set of rules about how we negotiate those waters. We have this little pool run coordinated like a finely orchestrated minuet each morning (well except for the "slow" part of a minuet). First of all, it is me and the dads in the morning dropping off our swimmers. At our house, the mom is the "morning person" and the dad, not so much. So, for years and years I have been accustomed to several things: I drive the early morning practices. The other swimmers' dads drive the early morning practices. Starbucks is not open until 6:00 a.m. and I am well aware that said dads are out driving around without that first cup of coffee. Dads who are very amiable and friendly at all other times, do not like to wave, nod, or especially chat at that hour of the morning (I am always very considerate in just offering a smile at that time of day). There is a 10 second drop off time, whereby the car advances through the circle drive, slows down, stops for ten seconds, tops, while the swimmer hops out, grabs the swim bag, and heads toward the pool door, before the driver advances around the circle and on to work, albeit I head home again. Fine tuned. We all get it. We all have been doing it for years and even the newbies catch on real quick. We cut through the parking lots in a very prescribed way so we don't cross paths and we all know how to do this without fail...and maybe in some cases with some of those dads, half asleep. However, for a few weeks during the summer, the wrestling and football teams have "early morning conditioning workouts" which calls for them ALL to be there at 6:00 a.m. There are hundreds of them, CHS is a big big school.
This is NOT a pretty sight...these people DO NOT GET IT when it comes to the fine art of dropping off their athletes. They all drive like normal people during the regular school day...go figure! Who has time to mess with that...going around the long way, not cutting through the parking lots, ignoring the stop signs so that we can each have a one-way lane (of our own devising). These parents linger at the drop off point to hug and kiss their athletes and hand them packages of food along with their gear bags (we swimming parents know that hugs and kisses can wait until a much more reasonable hour, that our kids are on their own for shoving down whatever food they can find before they head out in the morning, and that each and everyone of them is perfectly capable of getting that gear bag out of the trunk themselves, therefore there is no need for any of the parents to be exiting those cars at that hour of the day for any sort of little niceties in life whatsoever). Having all these wrestling and football parents clogging up the drop off line is just fraught with frustration for those of us who know the drill and can be in and out of there in less than 15 seconds. Matt had to sprint to the door this morning as the line was taking way too long. Dryland before we even reach practice! Thankfully it is only for a few weeks and then we swim parents can get back to our regular routine...this morning there was a lot of applying the brakes quickly and swerving to miss those drivers who think it is the 7:00 a.m. run...they have no clue that it is a whole different arena with a completely different set of game plans out there at 5 or 6 in the morning! I am certain those other parents are wondering how we swim parents ever get by the rest of the year...it is such a short amount of time, it hardly seems worth negotiating with them on the rules of the road poolside at the school. Matt just shook his head and said, "Well, Mike will need to be wearing his shoes if we are going to need to sprint this far to the door every morning!"