I actually like doing car pool.

I love my kids and I’m glad they’re getting a good education. I don’t mind taking my neighbor’s kids either — they’re usually very well-behaved.

Yesterday my daughter’s friend Esty asked “Mrs. Miller is it okay if I eat a snack in your car?”

I laughed so hard that I spilled coffee all over my steering wheel and my French toast went sliding into the gear shift syrup dripping down the console. “Sure Esty ” I said generously “No problem.”

It’s not the drive itself that bothers me it’s the logistics of it. Take the boys’ school Beis Limud.* There’s a complex algorithm used to determine the car pool system:

[Every Sunday morning – afternoons three times a month + (number of weekday Rosh Chodesh ª 16 neighbors who attend Beis Limud)] / (number of boys who go early for minyan + 1 for the boy who sleeps late) + cos (number of times it is your turn to drive car pool ª number of seats in your car) = 57.

And though the girls have fewer days of school than the boys there are more Beis Limud students in the neighborhood and the car pool configurations often leave me so stressed that I’ll call my neighbor and tearfully beg her “Just tell me when to drive and I’ll do it! I give up!”

Someone should invent a car pool app customizable for each neighborhood. You upload the school calendar and download all of your preferences.

a. would rather drive mornings

b. would rather drive afternoons

c. would rather drive afternoons only on long Fridays

d. would rather send a car service

Number of seats available:

a. one not counting my son

b. none counting my son and my daughter and my toddler

c. six if you count the cargo area as seating space

There would be other categories too: Do you consider yourself a safe driver? Do others consider you a safe driver? Does your vehicle have four-wheel drive? What flavor car freshener do you use? Will your children behave on the way to school? Do they remain semi-comatose until halfway through the morning? Or are they shrieking like banshees from the moment they exit your front door? And so on.

All the relevant information would be uploaded to the app and we’d let the computing system work out the schedule rather than commence with those awkward phone calls “Hi um… do you have room for my son tomorrow? I know that we’re usually in the other car pool but for some reason… Oh no the Schwartzes’ shattered windshield had nothing to do with us. That was purely coincidence.” (Excerpted from Family First Issue 563)