Just so you understand, it’s often not the parents’ choice. We’ve lived in several places where the school wouldn’t send a bus to our home. Once was because we lived too close to the school, once was because we lived in a rural area they wouldn’t drive to, and once was because the school didn’t even have busses (and yes, this was a California public school, albeit a small one).
So don’t think all parents who drive their kids to school are just doing it to waste gas and annoy you.
I’m impressed that she managed to be parked illegally for 4 hours before the police wrote her a ticket. Usually, the DC Parking Enforcement Militia will get you within 30 minutes.
TVeblen, that wasn’t Wright Plus, was it??
My story. Was living in a house divided into 3 apartments. My roommate and I had the largest unit that included the driveway. Upstairs guy sublet his apartment one summer to some idiot college students (note: we were idiot graduate students). They used the driveway every now and then, but it usually wasn’t a problem.
September comes. Idiot upstairs college students leave, but leave their car at the top of the driveway. We can still get in and out, so it’s not a big problem.
Fall comes. Pages slip from the calendar. It is now mid-October and the car is stil there. So my roommate, who was/is a mechanic, goes under the car, does something with the transmission, and get the car in neutral. We push it out of the driveway and onto a side street.
More pages fall from the calendar. It is now November. The city gets around to towing it.
More pages fall from the calendar. It is now December. Idiot college students show up, wanting to know where there car is. Hey, sorry, we don’t know. It kind of disappeared one day.
Kids: Gee Mom, what a boring woman you are! :dubious:
5que, you’re the second person I’ve noticed referring to the “top” of a driveway. I’ve never heard that term before (except when the driveway is on a hill). Which end is normally considered the top? I’m guessing from context it’s the street end?
You know, I am not sure what you mean here? Am I being whooshed or are you implying that a parent who teaches their child good manners deserves a raised eyebrow.
Several years ago, I was enjoying an evening at a waterfront club’s “Sunset Party.” After sunset, I decided to head for home, only to discover a small pickup parked in the driveway of an entire parking lot. A crowd of disgruntled drivers gathered while we had the truck’s owner paged repeatedly, but no one showed to move the pickup. Finally, we had all waited long enough, and a plan was hatched: The truck had a manual transmission, and the back sliding window was unlatched. I was skinny enough to shimmy in and put the truck in neutral, and a contingent of blocked-in drivers pushed it into the street. After unblocking the drive, we called the local constabulary to report a truck parked in the street. I heard later that the guy got booked for “drunk and disorderly” when he showed up at the PD looking for his &$#@ing truck… and he still had to pay a towing and storage fee. :wally Heh!
In my wallet, I carry business-card-sized orange fluorescent stickers that say “Remember kids: If you leave your emergency lights on, you can park anywhere!”
Most common point of application – on the corner outside a convenience store that is kit-korner to an elementary school, on a heavily-trafficked streat, by my house. (Where illegal parking makes it impossible to see kiddies crossing at the light as people whip around the corner. Assholes.)
The point is good. It just seemed like kind of a long speech for the occasion (for the juvenile audience involved).
Nope, at least as I use it, the top is the part away from the street/toward the house. The bottom is where it meets the street. Maybe it was from my house growing up – all the lots were elevated from street level (it was Florida, and the street would flood). So the driveway naturally was a little hill, and that’s where we got top and bottom.
We now return you to your bitchface rant, already in progress…
I’ve enjoyed the stories in this thread. Here’s a couple more.
Where I used to live in Maine we shoveled out our own areas to park. We got a serious amount of snow so it was an ongoing and hard work. People would occasionally use our shoveled out spots when visiting a friend in our neighborhood.
On the first offense I left a note explaining that we worked hard to shovel these spots out and requesting they not park there. One afternoon I got home late to find a familiar luxury car in my spot. I had just left a note a few days before on that very car. My neighbor said he had a similar experience with the same car. We went and got our shovels and buried the car until only the antenna was showing.
Wasn’t around to watch the outcome but the car was never there again.
On another occasion people near my Mom’s house would turn around in her driveway. INstead of pulling up far enough to use the other section of the Y to back out they would save themselves 5 seconds by backing over the lawn leaveing ruts and tire marks that irritated dear old Mom. Her solution was to put a heavy metal planter on that section of lawn wieghed down with rocks. The person that backed over it a tore up their car was none to happy and complained loudly until my Mom asked them “What the hell are you doing backing over my lawn?” Feisty lady that one.
Those are great, cosmosdan!
Ahh, well that was intentional as sort of a little joke, but if you think about, if parents really spent that much time explaining things to their children we would have a much, much better world.
Not really, because with most kids, it’s like that old Far Side strip.
What we say:
Bitch: Yes honey, Mommy was wrong for blocking his driveway, that is against the law and it is just rude. I did it to save some time because I am very busy, but when I did that, I made my life more convenient by inconveniencing someone else, that is never right. Although you will be tempted in life to do the same thing I did, you should try not to because YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. NO ONE IS SPECIAL, YOU ARE JUST ANOTHER PERSON IN THIS SOCIETY AND YOU HAVE TO RESPECT OTHERS. But, as you can see,when reasonable adults talk, you can solve EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM that ever existed. I hope you learned from this.
What they hear:
Yes honey, mommy was wrong for blocking this driveway, that is against the law (kid starts losing interest at this point), and is rude…blah, blahdeblah honey, blah blah Mommy says, blah blah blahdeblah de blah, .blah, blahdeblah honey, blah blah Not SPECIAL, blah blah blahdeblah de blah.blah, blahdeblah respect, blah blah, I hope you learned from this.
Now there’s a pleasent view.
I think we explain to kids that they are special and so is everyone else. We all have our unique gifts to offer and so we treat other people with respect and consideration. It takes a decade or so to to make this point and it’s made by lots of conversations short and long. Primarily it’s made by the example that we set when dealing with others. Kids see through BS pretty easily.
Are you saying we do this now, or we should do this? Cause I have to say, I don’t think kids are getting the message that we treat other people with respect and consideration based on what I see their parents doing every day. They are more likely getting the message “Do whatever you can get away with. Anything’s okay if you don’t get caught.” I agree - children do learn by the example parents set, and there are a whole lot of parents setting bad examples out there.
I don’t know about now but it’s been done in the past, anyone who’s seen “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” could tell you that. Too bad he’s no longer with us.
Just for the record, I’ve never seen “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” I understand your reference, but not everyone is born and raised in the U. S. of A.
Are you saying Mr. Rogers skipped over Calgary on his way to Edmonton? I used to watch him all the time! 
<–(Friendly neighbourhood thbbbbth)
sorry in advance for the slight hijack here (not a total hijack, because after all, this OP is about people and their lack of respect for others).
First of all, my post was partly in jest, hence the giant smilie. I have no doubt that kids have the sense to understand reasonable information. My point was, are they interested in long drawn out lectures about it.
Second, do you have kids? Or more to the point do you remember being a kid? Yes on both counts for me. A kid’s attention span is only so long, therefore, a big ole speech about something, whether homework and getting into college, or on respect for others, and after a pretty short period of time, a child is going to simply tune out the rest.
(Disclaimer…And of course, as with anything else, I’m sure there are exceptions, little blobs of perfection who hang on authorities’ every word.)
Anyway, my post was mainly in supporting the poster who made a semi-joke out of the Bitch mom’s longwinded pretend speech.
In my opinion, she really SHOULD have done something more along the lines of explaining to her kids that she needed to pull up and let the man out because that was the right and considerate thing to do. I’m certainly not on her side at all.