Well, school is back in session here in Louisiana. And we all know what that means. Alright, yes, there is high school football. Who doesn’t relish the return of delightful Friday nights where we yell at the coaches for not giving our own fledgling star the ball, thus forever ruining his chances at an LSU scholarship?

No, I am talking about the return of driving through the school zones. These are the zones that lie somewhere outside the space-time continuum- where multi-tasking soccer moms put on makeup, scold Jimmmy for calling his sister a name, and remind hubby on the cell phone to pick up the dry cleaning after work, all while maneuvering through a maze of traffic cones, buses, and crossing guards. I bet any one of them could give Tony Stewart a run for his money on the NASCAR circuit.

The thing I wonder is why public officials decide to build schools where they do. They seem to be strategically located so as to give commuters the maximum amount of anguish. Do they actually plan it that way, or did those places just happen to be where the politically-connected owned land to sell to the school board?

They always put signs in the school zones telling you to slow down to something like 20 miles per hour, although you’re lucky if you could get up to about 5 when you’re going through. The parish can save the money they spend to put up these signs. Instead, they can put to better use by, say, building a new golf course where we commuters can let out or frustrations by smacking a little white ball into a pond.

In my district they even had a dry run last week, as if we had forgotten the hell we’d gone through just a few months prior. The soccer moms were nowhere to be seen for this drill. They know better; they only venture through these black holes when it’s absolutely necessary.

Times sure have changed. When I was a kid, I used to walk to school. No, it wasn’t uphill through the snow both ways like my father used to do, but still I walked. No wonder there’s such a problem with obesity among the youth with today’s 21st Century American School-day Ritual. This consists of prying the video game controller out of the kids’ hands, shoving them into the Ford Expedition, and chauffering them to the front door of the school via the McDonalds’ drive-thru.

Okay, now that I’ve vented, I’ll see you on the golf course, or, more likely, in the woods beside it.