First day of school jitters are a normal (and inevitable) rite of passage when you're a kid. You're worried about who will sit next to you on the bus, if you'll somehow embarrass yourself in your new class, and if this year's teacher will be a total nightmare or the best one yet. But something they don't tell you when you're a kid is that those awkward moments don't always fade when you get older. In fact, as one dad on Facebook proved this week, you can TOTALLY still embarrass yourself on the first day of school as an adult — even if you're just sitting in the drop-off lane.
The story comes courtesy of Ian Backstrom, husband to writer Mary Katherine Backstrom of the popular parenting blog Mom Babble.
Mary Katherine shared the story to her Facebook page on Wednesday, where it's since gone viral with parents everywhere, because … well, just wait.
"I totally biffed my first kindergarten car line drop off," Ian admits in the post. "Everything was going great … initially. I found the line, I executed a very precise and controlled curb pull-up."
He was even "sweet and charming with the designated kid picker upper teacher," he says, adding that after the drop-off was complete, he was "cool and collected with the pull-out," too.
It was a first day back to school success! High-fives all 'round!
But that's when it happened: the tell-tale THUMP beneath his tires.
"I plowed over the ridiculously large orange traffic cone," the dad of two shared, recalling how the situation quickly escalated into a truly cringe-worthy debacle. "The man driving in front of me, as well as multiple safety patrollers, began frantically yelling at me and waving me down," he continued. "I got out of the car, frazzled, stopping the whole drop off line, my bald head beet red with embarrassment."
Unfortunately, things only got worse from there, because Ian had apparently run over the world's most stubborn traffic cone.
There, in front of a long car line of other parents — who were no doubt silently seething over the holdup — Ian "proceeded to army crawl the entire length of the car trying to pry out the stupid cone."
He eventually wrestled it free, but even when he did, the victory was short lived because the scene that formed behind his car was quite embarrassing.
"When I emerged from underneath the truck with the cone, it looked like one of those end-of-the-world scenes where everyone steps out of their cars in traffic to watch the tsunami disaster ruin everything," he recalled. "Except I was the disaster."
Yep. He had officially become that person.
"The cone looked like the crumpled Sorting Hat from Harry Potter," the dad of two continued.
"I handed my shame over to the safety patroller without making eye contact, then returned to my truck. I could literally hear everyone behind me shaking their heads."
Oof. Yeah, that's bad.
Adding to the dad's embarrassment was the fact that he wasn't alone in the car, either -- his mother-in-law had witnessed the whole debacle.
"How do I come back from this, folks?" he asked the good people of Facebook. "I have the scarlet letter of carline doofus forever on my Dad record."
Yep — yep, he does. And that's never an easy thing to scrub from your record.
But the crème de la crème of the whole cringey scenario came when Ian later showed up to work.
There, a colleague "kindly pointed out" a black line of dirt stretching from his forehead to his neck, which must have been acquired when he dove under his car to fish out the cone.
Oy. Vey.
The moral of this story? "Don’t worry if your first day was a disaster, I lowered the bar," Backstrom declared. "Compared to me, you are doing great. And I’m going to go into hiding now."
LOL. Honestly, I don't blame him for his mortification. But although I've never had to dive under my car while a line of annoyed parents formed behind me, I have DEFINITELY embarrassed myself publicly on more than one occasion — just as we all have. So hats off to this dad for sharing his awkward first-day-of-school moment with the world. It sure makes our own little gaffes feel a wee bit more normal.
