Desperately Seeking Cooldom

It appears that I have reached that point in my life where I am no longer cool. I now do really lame Mommythings. No, I am not being too hard on myself. I mean, I have moments of cooldom; but in general, I am forced to do things that just embarrass my former cool self.

Case in point: I actually got up in the middle of the night to go wait in line to get into…no, not a concert or show of some sort. I did it to get Mountain Child into a preschool. That’s right. I woke up at 4 a.m. to get in line by 5:30 a.m. downtown to get my daughter into one of the only viable preschools around.

Perhaps you remember my last incident with preschools. I had plenty of time to lay low about the whole thing and mentally recover from it. A few weeks ago, I started the search again, this time armed with lots more recommendations and lists of questions to ask my prospects. The list, it turns out, was pretty short. There isn’t just much to pick from around here. I don’t blame the fact that we are the middle of West Virginia and somehow inferior when it comes to preschools—it’s just the rule of population. Not as many people live around here, so therefore there aren’t as many preschools. I settled on a preschool downtown which had been around for, about 75 years and also included a music and Spanish language program. I was about as excited as I used to be about myself going on a weekend trip with the girls. Like I said—my cool points are being lost by the minute.

But there was one little hitch with this particular preschool. It had exactly one morning that it opened itself up to the community for new people to register. And that was at 7:00 in the morning.

“So should I arrive a bit early that day? Are there a lot of people that try to get in?”

“Oh, I would get here early if I were you,” the preschool director said mildly.

“Like how early?”

“Oh, I have noticed people coming as early as around 6 a.m.”

Six?!? What is this, anyway? Now, my competitive radar is up. Right then and there I decided that Mountain Child must get into this school. If people are lining up at such an ungodly hour of the day, then it has to be worth it, right? And I will get there before anyone else.

I talk to other friends about the preschool. Apparently this place is notorious for parents camping out on the sidewalk practically in the middle of the night waiting for the doors to open to get their kids in this place. And once you’re in, you have to do it every year—and you have to come even earlier. One person told me that she knew of parents going at 4:30 in the morning. Luckily, that isn’t quite the case with the day that I was going—only the crazy parents that actually got their kids into this place had to do that. But still. I figured that I had to get there at 5:30 a.m. to beat the rush.

At that hour, it is still really cold at the beginning of March in West Virginia. Like still in the 30’s. I woke up at 4 a.m. I layered up, packed at hot tea to go, and headed out.

When I arrived, there were already two parents waiting. I decided that I was the Most Awesome Mother Ever because now I was #3 in line and was most definitely getting Mountain Child in. If I could survive the cold and boredom. I brought nothing to read and the only place to sit was on a cold metal bench. I suppose this is why people brought tents and chairs and practically had a campout for these things. It is cold and you need shelter.

Other parents trickled in. To my surprise, they were mostly dads on their way to work. I hadn’t even considered asking my husband to come. I think that is because he would have laughed hysterically in my face if I would have suggested that he get up and come. I don’t hold that against him. I am laughing at myself hysterically in the face for doing this.

We all chat and joke that we all probably used to wait in lines like this for concerts or something way more with it than doing this. I nod my head in agreement, but then I remember the last time I waited in line for like. We waited for over an hour to see Jesco White, the Dancing Outlaw, at the Charleston Power Park before a minor league baseball game. Another time, when I was pregnant, the celebrity chef Paula Deen was coming to the Williams Sonoma in my old hometown. And honestly, friends, I was so excited to meet her that you would have thought I was waiting in line to see the Dave Matthews Band or Brad Pitt—anyone more fashionable than the Queen of Southern Cooking and Butter. And before that? It was at a university when I was studying in my English graduate program—I waited in line to hear Rita Dove read poetry. Before that, I am not even sure. But it had to be something that the Cool Kids would have done, right….?

I realize now that I perhaps never had many cool points in the first place. I can’t blame my dorkiness on the Mountain Child.