You know where you can put that whistle?

Every morning I take Sassy and The Bandit to school. That means that every day I have to negotiate my car through a thousand other cars in a tight, cramped parking lot with a lot of other parents who are also running late for work and a bunch of stay-at-home mommies who like to loiter and chat with each other. This is absolutely nothing different from every other parent who doesn’t home school their kids.

Mostly I’m fine with all the jockeying for parking spaces and such that the process requires, but there is one little thing that is driving me absolutely crazy.

The kids’ new school has a crossing guard Nazi. Even though I am their mother and I successfully (barely) grew them in my womb and managed to raise them to the rip old ages of six and eight, and even though I hold their hands in the parking lot, apparently my forty-two years of street crossing experience doesn’t qualify me to escort the fruits of my loins across the pavement by myself.

I was yelled at by the crossing guard. Yelled at. Loudly.

In my defense, we’re not talking about a traditional crosswalk situation here. It’s not across a street but just the parking lot. Like at the grocery store. Or Target. Or McDonalds. All of which I manage to maneuver through – all by myself – any number of times in a given week.

I totally get why I should use the crosswalk and why I should teach my children the correct safety procedures. But I don’t need to be yelled at by an overzealous, power hungry woman in an orange vest carrying a red octagon on a stick. As I recall, all the kids in the safety patrol at my elementary school were a little over the top, too.