3 Things To Do While Waiting To Pick Up Your Kids From School

A friend's FB status gives me an idea to come up with this entry.

Are you just like my friend bored and restless as you wait in your car parked under the hot sun for your kids to appear out of the school yard? If your answer is yes, well fret not. Here I present to you three things that you can do to occupy your waiting time. Any one of these suggested activities will supposedly make you forget that you are actually waiting for someone.

First and foremost, always have reading materials readily available in your car. They may consist of newspapers, magazines, books or even activity books (not unlike the ones you give your pre-school kid who is waiting in the car with you for him to busy himself with just so he would get out of your hair). You can read them while in your car with its engine and aircond switched on or to save on fuel, you can do that once you have parked your car at a shady spot, with the windows rolled down and the engine turned off. While waiting, read as many pages of the available materials as you possibly can. However do not just read the words silently, read them aloud as if you are reading the news over tv or radio. This way, besides killing time you get to gain more info plus you can help improve your enunciation. Sure, you may get one or two curious stares shot at you by other parents who are also waiting for their kids but heck, who cares?

If however, you don't fancy reading books then you can turn to the activity books to do some join-the-dots drawing or even colour in the outlined pictures. This can be very therapeutic and you may enjoy them more than your 5-year old does. In fact by filling your time with the activity books, you may even forget that you are an adult and don't be surprised if you suddenly squabble with your 5-year old fighting over who should get to colour what and what colour to use .

Next, if after a while you still find yourself bored out of your wits, you can get out of the car, find the nearest tree and start counting the number of leaves on the tree. After you are done with the tree remember to jot down the figure into your cell phone before moving on to the next nearest tree. Repeat this process until you see your kids running out of the school gate. This way, the next time you past by the street you can always brag about how you know exactly how many leaves each tree has and then start to play a guess-how-many-leaves-in-the-tree game with whomever is unlucky enough to be your passenger. Insist that if the passenger guesses wrong he will have to pick up your kids from school the following week. Thus, you get to skip a week of fetching your kids from school. Yay!

However, if you come to a point when you have run out of things to read and trees with leaves to count, then it's time for you to get out the car and get yourself acquainted with the school security personnel. Get a pencil and your notebook ready before you walk up to the guard post. Give the security man a big smile and a greeting before you introduce yourself. Let him know that you intend to interview him for some vague project. This way you will be sure to get his full cooperation for the interview. Start asking him on his childhood before moving on to questions on the next stage of his life. If you are lucky he may even give you the inside story on some hot juicy gossip that goes on behind closed school gates. Not only will you get to kill time by doing the interview, you may also gain a friend. Who knows whenever you are late to pick up your kids, you can ask Mr Security there to help you keep an eye on junior before your arrival.

So there you go. Those are just only three suggestions that you can follow while waiting to fetch your kids from school. I can come up with more but I think these will do for now.