It's a delicate political situation, the early primary school pickup pack. The only thing I have in common with the drop-off and pick-up parents is the common choice of school. But there is such a powerful social pecking system established and maintained with bodylanguage and non-verbal cues. I can't take it seriously - but I sortof do, because of the way, last term, that the social skirmish between H's mum and B's mum played itself out in a literal and quite brutal punch-up between the kids around the side of the play equipment. Nobody wants to be labelled a weird mum in case their little prince or princess ends up the weird, teased, terrified kid by association, and ends up stuck with it for their whole childhood.
Going into the pickup pack presents certain basic challenges.
1) What do you wear? Designer labels? A professional outfit - suit and jacket, fluted skirt and crisp tailored shirt? Gym clothes? (Pristine or sweaty? Or designer gym clothes?) Beige slacks and camel pumps and some floaty layered top system?
On Wednesday I miscalculated. I only just managed to extract the younger kids from the park and prise the scooters from their indignant claws, I hoisted and clipped them into the car seats, and raced up to the hill, arriving at pickup just in time - and then I realised I was still wearing my very best potting-mix-decorated gardening clothes, embellished with a giant dried-snot smear from one of the kids still encrusting my shoulder. Oh, the disapproval! This is a good school in a good suburb - one really ought not arrive in tracky-dacks and festy t-shirt! The social ladies really gave me the look-down, look-up, turn-away, sneer-over-shoulder. It was 'lucky' for me that I did the drop-off the next day wearing a nice black dress with pearl drop earrings to reestablish my status. Another aberration may not be tolerated.
2) Who do you walk over to stand with? This part is worse than Year 9 girls were, because now we identify each other by our cars, our husbands' professions, and whether our outfits are properly styled and coordinated. The real-estate magnate's wife won't sit with the tree lopper's wife, and there are a few who who won't sit with you if your shoes aren't right. And while we do know we shouldn't get too stuck in our ways or caught in cliques, we do fall into the same friendship groups as our kids, maybe hoping that our children have chosen their friendships based on some kind of instinctive, inherent compatibility, which extends to the families too. Or maybe it's just pragmatism: we'll have to sit through all the closest friends' birthday parties sometime so we ought to get a little bit social now.
I actually do like a few of the other mums. I want to have the families over for a barbie and a proper conversation, but have been working too hard to get organised. Hey I can barely catch up with my own friends! And the women most like me and who I like most, are, like me, working - with grandparents to pick up the kids, or using after-care, and so we only get these few short grabs of socialising.
S is a doctor, she is smart and nice and dresses a bit like me. (Too bad that our sons have recently been trying to shove each other off the play equipment - she and I hang out anyway.) A has just started her own business and doesn't at all mind me in gardening clothing. K is a civil engineer with very similar battle stories to mine. We all have a lot in common, up to the point where we really fundamentally don't - funnily enough, it's just like that between our kids.
3) What do you talk about? What is new to talk about with the same other mums who have met every school morning and every afternoon for the last two years - and probably for coffee and tennis in between? (The men doing pickup don't talk; they just stand under the tree, arms folded, like emperor penguins with their backs to the wind waiting for their chicks to waddle out of the snowstorm.)
Conversations must also be timed carefully so they can be broken off as soon as the bell rings, and so much of the interrelational subtlety is in postural inclusion and exclusion rather than content. Having said that, if you have some particularly juicy topic, you become the centre of the pack for that crucial 3 to 8 minutes.
Two of the mums have a clear advantage in the socially-agreed-interesting topics discussions.
Going into the pickup pack presents certain basic challenges.
1) What do you wear? Designer labels? A professional outfit - suit and jacket, fluted skirt and crisp tailored shirt? Gym clothes? (Pristine or sweaty? Or designer gym clothes?) Beige slacks and camel pumps and some floaty layered top system?
On Wednesday I miscalculated. I only just managed to extract the younger kids from the park and prise the scooters from their indignant claws, I hoisted and clipped them into the car seats, and raced up to the hill, arriving at pickup just in time - and then I realised I was still wearing my very best potting-mix-decorated gardening clothes, embellished with a giant dried-snot smear from one of the kids still encrusting my shoulder. Oh, the disapproval! This is a good school in a good suburb - one really ought not arrive in tracky-dacks and festy t-shirt! The social ladies really gave me the look-down, look-up, turn-away, sneer-over-shoulder. It was 'lucky' for me that I did the drop-off the next day wearing a nice black dress with pearl drop earrings to reestablish my status. Another aberration may not be tolerated.
2) Who do you walk over to stand with? This part is worse than Year 9 girls were, because now we identify each other by our cars, our husbands' professions, and whether our outfits are properly styled and coordinated. The real-estate magnate's wife won't sit with the tree lopper's wife, and there are a few who who won't sit with you if your shoes aren't right. And while we do know we shouldn't get too stuck in our ways or caught in cliques, we do fall into the same friendship groups as our kids, maybe hoping that our children have chosen their friendships based on some kind of instinctive, inherent compatibility, which extends to the families too. Or maybe it's just pragmatism: we'll have to sit through all the closest friends' birthday parties sometime so we ought to get a little bit social now.
I actually do like a few of the other mums. I want to have the families over for a barbie and a proper conversation, but have been working too hard to get organised. Hey I can barely catch up with my own friends! And the women most like me and who I like most, are, like me, working - with grandparents to pick up the kids, or using after-care, and so we only get these few short grabs of socialising.
S is a doctor, she is smart and nice and dresses a bit like me. (Too bad that our sons have recently been trying to shove each other off the play equipment - she and I hang out anyway.) A has just started her own business and doesn't at all mind me in gardening clothing. K is a civil engineer with very similar battle stories to mine. We all have a lot in common, up to the point where we really fundamentally don't - funnily enough, it's just like that between our kids.
3) What do you talk about? What is new to talk about with the same other mums who have met every school morning and every afternoon for the last two years - and probably for coffee and tennis in between? (The men doing pickup don't talk; they just stand under the tree, arms folded, like emperor penguins with their backs to the wind waiting for their chicks to waddle out of the snowstorm.)
Conversations must also be timed carefully so they can be broken off as soon as the bell rings, and so much of the interrelational subtlety is in postural inclusion and exclusion rather than content. Having said that, if you have some particularly juicy topic, you become the centre of the pack for that crucial 3 to 8 minutes.
Two of the mums have a clear advantage in the socially-agreed-interesting topics discussions.
- M works in costume, hair and makeup for a TV station, and so she has an endless supply of dirt and inside information on the stars she dresses. When the talk turns to daytime TV (which can be the most talk-worthy thing that happens between drop-off and pick-up), M can step in with "Oh my god ... he is hopeless, he stuffed up the camera angles... they had to do, like, three takes of the kiss, and it was so awkward, because her husband was there, giving advice.... ." One on one, M is very down to earth, but she can really turn it up for the pickup pack.
- S, aforementioned, has a doctor's collection of wacky, gross and outrageous medical stories. I asked her what's new and she said "Oh have I got a story for you.... and then the surgeon said... it came out in pieces!... the smell... and then the charge nurse came and.... " Just make sure you're not eating any smallgoods while she's talking.
4) How Good are you as a Parent? There are norms, and stepping to either side of a norm is the path to ostracism. It is the pick-up pack, after all.
I'm not getting paranoid. Honest.
- Are you on time? Early means you're obsessive. Late means you're neglectful or sloppy.
- How do you groom the younger siblings for the school pickup?Are they snotty? Do they stink? (Are they in designer clothes?) Acceptable paramaters vary according to the clique.
- Have you been seen to yell, threaten, or lose the plot with your children in the playground?
- Are there any stories about your parental neglectfulness? eg. did someone once see you in tears in the local shopping centre before the nice policeman returned your lost toddler?
- Do your children eat bad food - so therefore you are neglectful? Do they live on perfectly nutritious things - so you must be a killjoy parent?
- Do your children exhibit appropriate abilities in sport and music - or are you either turning them into worthless couch-potatoes, or pressure-cooking your children to achieve?
- etc.
I'm not getting paranoid. Honest.
