Hamilton High Parking Lot Instructions

7:22 A.M. finds the Hamilton High Parking Lot swarming with hormonal, panicked and nearly late teenage drivers and/or a parent of some kind. Monday through Friday between 7:12 and 7:22 I drop off my two, panicked, nearly late, hormonal teenage daughters.

Instructions/thoughts/prayers/fervent hopes I have derived at 7:24 in order to survive the parking lot and where it leads:

Look both ways before you are in the middle of the traffic.

Please find more clothes that cover more of you. You aren’t prepared for the kind of attention you’re asking for.

Please don’t kiss anyone today. At least not someone I don’t know. Or like.

Stand up to Mrs. *&*!@%$%^*!

Do your best at something today.

Get an idea of who you want to be.

Be grateful you get to go to school. At some point in your four years, realize this is a privilege.

Please survive the day.

Please don’t be tempted beyond your values.

Come home when school is over and tell me something - out loud.

Please let me hug you the moment I see you…or at least before you go to bed - at midnight.

Note to self: I will, with super-human power, resist reacting to your ever changing attitude, so we will both live to see you graduate.

Please don’t let this be the next Columbine.

Pay attention to the very heavy moving vehicles in the parking lot! They are all driven by teenagers checking out the other “beautiful” teenagers walking blithely in front of them, or by parents devising instructions to save you from yourself and the rest of the world. On a side note: We can't afford the emergency room.

Please make it safely to the curb.

Be brave and step off the curb confidently. But look first.


I will miss this parking lot in three and a half years.