Open Letter to VIM

Dear Very Important Mom,

I get that you're a busy woman. I divine from your prominently displayed name badge, your holstered blackberry, your leather briefcase, your no-nonsense power suit, your sensible but stylish pumps and your tasteful jewelry, that you are no mere mortal Mom. My sixth sense (and the fact that you've checked your watch 10 times in five minutes) tells me that you have more important things to do than schlep your kid to a dentist appointment. I am duly impressed. Really.

As a woman who gets to venture into the grown up world every day, and might even have an honest to goodness water cooler around which to gather with your equally important co-workers, you are no doubt up to speed on current events.

As such, you may be aware that in the last two weeks, 9 children have lost their lives to gun violence in schools.

And yet....

You stood and argued with the front desk attendant for ten full minutes about the fact that you simply do not have time to go back to the car and retrieve your driver's license to prove that you are legally authorized to remove your child from the building. I parked right next to you. I know for a fact that it took us about 3.6 minutes to make our way inside. You wasted 6.4 minutes arguing that you are too busy to follow a protocol designed to keep your child and mine safe.

However, I suspect that you would be the first one to sue the pants off of the Board of Education were your child to be abducted, renamed Patience, and put in the breeding rotation for some wingnut fundamentalist with a Messiah complex.

You suck.

Here's the thing...I, like most other parents I know, am glad to be inconvenienced by these measures if it means keeping our children safe. I jump for joy when I am asked to empty my purse, even if the whole world sees my Tampax and Premsyn PMS. Metal Detector? Love it, even if I have to explain for the millionth time that I have a surgical steel clamp where my gall bladder used to be. I draw the line at a cavity search, but I'm not averse to a light frisking. Truthfully, it's the most excitement I'm likely to see on a weekday.

And handing over my I.D.? It's nothing. A Cake Walk. Three seconds out of my life.

We live on the outskirts of one of the 5 largest cities in the U.S. There are over 5 million people in the CSA (combined statistical area) of Metro Atlanta and over 600,000 people in our county alone. They are not all good, kind, decent people. Some of them want to hurt our children. Rape them, torture them, kill them.

If three seconds is too much time out of your day to prevent such a thing, perhaps you should consider employing someone for whom it is not such an inconvenience.

Also, the woman at the desk is just doing her job, which is, monitoring the flow of people in and out of the building, and accounting for the whereabouts of 1200 students. Calling her "attendance lady" in that sneering tone and reminding her that your taxes pay her salary was inexcusably pompous and rude.

So, please step out of the way and let me have three seconds to flash my I.D., collect my kid, and go. Because I may not have a conference call, or a power lunch, or a board meeting to go to, but I've got exactly 6 minutes before my other kid's bus arrives at my front door, a thirty minute drive in rush hour traffic to get to the dentist's office, and after that a mad dash to the ballpark for a 6:00 game. I have my own rat race to run, you see, albeit it in markedly less fashionable footwear.

And just so you know, that monstrosity you drive is an ecologists worst nigthmare.

Sincerely,

The Mom who stuck out her tongue at the back of your head so that "attendance lady" would know that someone else found you to be a self-important shrew.