Snot Nosed Brat

Okay, not really, but I nearly called him one.

"Noah" is a kiddo in the Little Critter's grade, and his mom has been having medical crises du jour for a number of weeks now. His mom is my friend, but this series of issues is bringing out a side of her that I'm not comfortable with.

They live around the corner from the school, in easy walking distance, and the boys are in third and forth grade. They've been used to their mom picking them up after school with the rest of us at the side gate, but since her medical issues began, she can't walk up to the school and/or drive up and get them. It's not so much pain as the medication she's taking. But every day she wants someone to bring them home to her.

So she calls endless times among us who meet on that side of the school, wondering who will get her kids each day. I was driving them home most every day except when I work. Another friend who has a daughter and four grandchildren, two of whom go to the school, was rounding them up with her crowd when her DIL couldn't get the grandkids. Eight kids don't fit into her vehicle, so it's always a little of a hardship to get them. But she managed when she could help.

The boys' mother, though, took to calling my friend and pretty much demanding to know who would be bringing the kids to her. Not a smart move. When my friend became more selective about answering her phone, messages would be left stating "Call me when you figure out who's picking up my kids."

This lady is also the chair of the school store, so we've stepped in and kept that going since she couldn't be there, and you all know how proud we are that the store is making a great deal of money. But she calls my friend and says "There's a lady who signed up to help, you really need to call her." Um, she made a phone call to tell my friend to make a phone call she could have made? I've caught her doing this to me as well. She asked me, while I was obviously away from the computer and couldn't possibly know, whether one company or another had better deals on wallets. It rather puzzled her that I replied that she should look online, compare the two, and then decide.

Apparently it's gotten so bad that my friend ends up on the phone with her for over two hours at a time, listening to her go nonstop about everything and running up huge cell bills for my friend. And on a day when my friend had to get her DIL to pick up all the kids because she was taking her 14 year old dog to the vet to put it down, their mom queried "Why didn't you pick up my kids?"

OK, all that to say this.

Noah and his brother met me outside the gate today as usual. I picked them up even though I was on my way to work, but it was either that or hear their mom call six times looking for another person to ask. I would have had them the previous day as well, except I got called in to sub for someone. I had called and told their mother to find someone else to get them and then I arranged for my friend to pick up the LC.

Well, Noah comes charging out, the little bugger, and challenges me with "Where WERE you yesterday?" As though I owed him an explanation.

Oh, uh-uh. "Excuse me? You don't talk to me that way. And I'll be taking it up with your mom."

So after my phone call to her, he's supposed to apologize. And after his mom talked to my friend, the new arrangement is that one of us watches them cross the street and make it to their own street, whereupon their mom, who can SEE THE CORNER FROM HER HOUSE will watch them home. Apparently the boys are tired of being shuttled around and never knowing who will see them home. "And we're not?" I didn't say, but thought really loudly.

The kicker is that there are three neighbor families on their street with whom the boys play regularly, who pass right by the boys' house on THEIR way home. And it never occurred to their mom to have those people, who wouldn't be going out of their way to do this, see them home.