RonO's Ramblings

...I was dropping The Kid off at his school, when I was passed by a parent who apparently couldn't let their precious bundle of a middle school student walk any further than absolutely necessary - and nearly hit my son and my car in the process.

The Kid's school shares a parking entrance with the adjacent high school, and one could use the same circular driveway - more a roundabout with only one entrance and one exit that are in the opposite directions - that is shared between both schools for drop offs. But, the preferred way for dropping off and picking up middle school students is to use a marked curb lane on the side of the parking lot adjacent to the middle school.

When we'd pulled in there were no other cars in the drop off lane, so I pulled forward to the far end - which is the closest to the school entrance and said "good bye" to The Kid. He then started to get out of the car on, unfortunately, the non-curb side since the drop off lane is on the left-hand side of the driveway. I looked back and tried to warn him as a car was shooting up the driveway much faster than is sane in a parking lot near middle and high school kids. I tried to warn him to watch out for the car, but he didn't hear me in time and still opened the door - probably no more than a couple of feet from the front of the other car.

As he was getting out and walking around, I noticed that the other driver pulled IN FRONT of the drop off lane - against the curb where the driveway narrows for its intersection with the aforementioned circular driveway - and was dropping of a kid. So this driver saved his or her child maybe 15 feet of walking by nearly killing my child and totaling both cars.

And I thought that the hospital employees who tried to drum up business by the way they drove through the student part of the shared parking garage at UNM were dangerous.