Since school started, I feel like I’m pulling off a tightrope routine, twice a day, for five days, while my husband stands nearby juggling on a unicycle.
We have three kids in three different schools, and there are only two of us parents available to deliver them to their various learning institutions. I’ve never had any interest in the science of cloning until now.
It would be nice to have another one of me or another one of my husband, just for school drop-offs and pickups. But science has not yet caught up with modern-day parenting needs, so here we are with our circus routines every morning and every afternoon.
I always think I’ll be organized and on top of the lunch-making, the cereal pouring, the bus pickups, and the drop-off windows. I’m always wrong. Just in the first week alone, I had to sprint, in my pajamas, with a kid in tow, to a bus stop. I had to make an emergency run to the grocery store for bread and Google what time school started three different times.
My inbox has exploded with multiple emails from all three schools arriving about every two hours, and I feel like I need one of those boards with the yarn and grainy photos that rogue FBI agents always have in movies about serial killers just to keep it all straight.
I do love the six hours of quiet when my house stays relatively clean. It’s — what’s the word? — resplendent. I miss my kids while they are gone and hope their days are going well.
But by the end of summer vacation, entropy had fully taken over our household and it was time for a change. I had stopped going down to the basement because I was too overwhelmed by the number of Legos on the floor. It was time for school to start again. And since it has, I’ve gotten more accomplished in one week between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. than I think I did all summer.
But at 3, the circus starts again, but even more intensely, because I need to be in three different places at the same time. Theoretically, the bus from the middle school arrives and I meet my oldest at 3:15, giving me just enough time to make it to the preschool by 3:20, and then to the elementary school by 3:30. There is no room for error. But errors are made. Traffic patterns and bus stop complications can push 3:15 to 3:30, and preschool to 3:30, then a frantic drive to the elementary school by 3:40. We have just barely made it every day since school began.
There has to be a better way, right? Maybe a clone that is only sentient twice a day?
If movies and television have taught me anything, it’s that absolutely nothing will go wrong if I create a creature and mess with its consciousness. Or maybe one of those time-turners from “Harry Potter”? Again, ripping a hole in the space-time continuum seems totally harmless and free from danger.
And where are we on flying cars? As a child I was told we’d have flying cars by the time I reached adulthood. I’ve been over 18 for while now and the vehicles all seem awfully gravity-prone. How would a flying car help with my situation? I’m not sure, but I am mad we don’t have them.
By the time any of this technology is actually implemented, my children will likely be sending their children to school. And when they do, I hope they remember the morning and afternoon circus routines from their childhood, and remember that it can be done.
Because it can be done.
Right?