The grand thing about growing up and being a grown up is that there are fewer rules I balk at following. Mostly, the laws I encounter in my everyday life are ones that seem reasonable. I've got no shell companies or overseas bank accounts, so the laws I encounter are more about slowing down in the school zone. Which I do, which I do.
Having kids in elementary school is a return to rules that chafe my soul. Don't get me wrong- I was a rule follower if ever there was one. I was a Very Good Girl.
But I also had a sense of justice and also a sense of efficiency, senses that would bristle at rules that seemed to have no basis or that, with no fair reason we could discern, slowed down my friends and me on our path to a goal. Rules that seemed to exist only to appease the fearful.
So now that we're back in this elementary school environment, here are some rules and restrictions I find myself doing Kumon-face at:
:-l No running to and from places
:-/ Tall ugly iron gates around and through the whole place.
:-\ Stand behind and stay behind the fence to pick up your kids
I get all the safety concerns. We all live through things, some of us more than others, that cause us to want to put in place rules that will prevent calamity. I get that schools and other places where kids gather also have an important job, which is to keep those kids safely where they belong.
And yet. Some days, I feel like the rules are jeans I've long outgrown. Some days, I just want to be able to hold my child's hand, walk her to class. Some days, I want to run with her there, just for fun, when we're not even late. Some days, I want to take them out of school and take myself out of work and drive together wherever we feel like it until we don't feel like driving, and then stop and see where we are and have a snack and take a picture and write stories together and go home, full and happy.