Friday, July 16, 2010

Deadbeat Dad

Those of you who have done pickup in your car after school at Punahou (and probably every other school) have undoubtedly cursed the slow-moving (yet really efficiently organized) lines at least once in the whole experience. At Lange Ley, the boys' school, all the adultos crowd outside the double doors on the sidewalk and wait for a glimpse of their son or daughter so the teachers can let the students go home. It's organized mayhem: all the mothers greet each other and each other's children, ram bodies like bumper cars, and squeeze pedestrians into the street while they blow their cigarette smoke into each other's faces, and the nannies (the vast majority of the women) all chatter about whatever nannies chatter about when they come to pick up their little charges.


There are a few fathers who come to pick up their children, but most of them are dressed in their suits or other work clothes. There's one who sticks out like a sore thumb - the deadbeat dad who shows up with earbuds blasting The Dan Patrick Show, dressed in some goofy combination of layered jackets and sweatshirts, and looking confused at the words flying around him through the smoke while he searches for his sons through the glass puertas:


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