I keep reading and hearing all kinds of solutions for the rising gas prices and our shortage of oil. I had an epiphany last week on the best solution yet.
It's important to know some background before I provide the solution. Robyn left me last week with all the kids to take care of. Apparently she had enough confidence in me to do this. I still am not sure why, but she must think highly of me. She went off to Education Week to learn how to be a better parent and left me to the actual work of parenting. The end result was that she in fact did return a better parent and my parenting skills rapidly degenerated.
Between soccer practice, football practice, violin lessons, soccer games, football games, mutual night, and school, I think I drove more last week than I have in the last 6 months. Of course all of these activities are back to back, so some days I would be driving back and forth for hours.
For some reason I never really thought about Robyn doing all of this before. I knew she seemed to be in the car a lot, but I never connected the dots. Men are sometimes slow on the pick up. Perhaps it never really dawned on me because I thought that somebody would definitely go insane doing all this driving, so there is no way that it was going on without Robyn going insane.
So how much gas does a Chevrolet Suburban use driving all around town all week long? Great question. Multiple that by all the Soccer Mom's across the country and I would imagine that our use of Gasoline quickly becomes one of the top uses.
In addition to the volume of driving required for all these activities, the amount of coordination and information sharing required is absurd. My email inbox is filled with reminders of practices, game schedules, pictures from the last game blasted out to everyone.
And then there is the time involved. No longer are the days where you can just drop your kid off and pick them up. There are actual responsibilities required of you. In fact, some of our programs make it mandatory for the parents in order for the kids to play. Half time snacks, setting up chairs and tents, working the concession stands, bring popsicles for after practice, mandatory photographers, etc. Heaven forbid that you don't volunteer on eneough things. The social pressure from the other parents is overwhelming.
My suggested solution is to drop all organized sports for the kids. Let's go back to the days when kids would go knock on their friends door with soccer ball in hand and gather all their friends together for a neighborhood soccer game at the local park. Or somehow know when to show up at the baseball field with your glove and bat for a pick up game of baseball. We didn't use to need organized sporting activities that our parents drove us to. We didn't need our parents emailing each other to coordinate things. We coordinated. Somehow we could get all of our friends together (without texting them) to play. I don't think the organized sports make our kids any better. I don't see better athletes now than when I was a kid. In fact, I could make an argument that they are worse. Kids don't know how to knock on their friends doors and ask the parent who answers, "Can Billy come out and play?". Just think of the gas that will be saved once you get all the Suburbans and Mini-vans off the road. Cancel all organized youth sports programs and our gas consumption will dramatically decrease, families will have more time with each other, kids will learn how to communicate without their parents doing it for them, and I think we will all be more happy in the end.
Is it just me or are you in a similar situation?
