Pet Peeve # I don't know, I think I'm on 4...

This should be entitled - "Rude People Suck..."

My youngest daughter is in elementary school, and if you have a child of that age, you probably know about the morning "drop-off circle." It's a loop in the parking lot where parents drive in, the kid hops out of the car, closes the door and the parent goes on their merry way. At our school, if this process takes more than fifteen seconds per car, there is an enormous backup of cars out onto the road, coming from both directions. Every morning my daughter and I get a good laugh from parents who make their kids put their backpacks in the trunk of the car or the back of the SUV, so they have to get out of the car to help them, basically annoying every other parent in line. We even have pet names for every parent who annoys us by doing this, such as "old, wrinkly, embarrassing dad," or "hunchback mom." Don't even get us started on the 20 soccer-mom driven white SUV's all in a row. We're so conscious of people having to wait behind us that when it's our turn to stop, sometimes I just yell, "I'm not coming to a complete stop, so Drop and Roll, baby - DROP and ROLL!!" My daughter usually responds with a completely blank "what are you smoking?" kind of stare. She doesn't think that's as funny as I do.
This morning we were about #5 in line for drop off when a mom gets out of her van, walks around to the passenger side and starts talking to another parent standing on the curb. For five minutes!! She seriously let an entire line of twenty cars, lined up out the parking lot and down the street, wait for her to finish her conversation. No one ever expects anyone to be quite so inconsiderate, so they are usually too close to the car in front of them to ease their way around them. We were all stuck. Remember I live in suburbia at it's finest, so honking at anyone while in the school parking lot would be like strangling a puppy in front of the kindergarten class.
You just don't do it.
So after the rude van mom finally leaves, two other cars who already made their kids get out leave the line behind her, and now I'm #2. The white sedan in front of me stops, two boys get out and then stand in the parking lot talking to their mom from the back passenger door for like five more minutes! You just don't DO this while people are lining up down the street! I was so pissed. I had my daughter jump out of the car and now she was standing on the top stair that leads up to the school waiting to wave goodbye to me as I drove away, like she does every morning (trust me...I know, she is SUCH a cutie!!). You could see people starting to squirm in their seats, and one of the boys kept nervously looking back at me, knowing that his mom was being incredibly inconsiderate. The line is now backed up down both sides of the street and the buses can't pull up to the curb to drop the kids off, because they can't GET to the curb. Now, I realize that five minutes out of my day is not a big deal. Even twice in one morning. In fact, I'm always half an hour early to work because I really do have that much time in the morning after dropping my daughter off. So theoretically I have very little to complain about. But, seriously, does she just not give a shit about the line of people waiting on HER? So finally, in the serene, tree-lined, peaceful elementary school parking lot, not to mention a long line of politically correct, SUV driving, physically and chemically altered stay-at-home soccer moms (and in front of my sweet little girl looking on), I LAID on my horn!
It was beautiful, I must say! But, of course, instead of that woman being known as the rude bitch in the white Camry, I will forever be known as the rude bitch in the silver Cabrio, but hey...I can handle that.