Hey, Teacher: Leave Them Kids Alone! 5 Things That Bug Me About School

Well, well, well. It's another glorious Tuesday, which means it's time to get our complainin' on with another edition of The Gripe Report!

This week, I was seeing tons of posts on social media and in the news about kids going back to school. If the youngsters in your neck of the woods haven't headed back to school yet, they will in due time.

It got me thinking about how your perception of this time of year changes as you get older, and depending on what your life is like.

Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com

When I was a school-aged kid, I think this time of year was about as depressed as I'd get all year long. It was brutal. Another fun summer of swimming pools, hanging with friends, and sleeping until noon was gone.

School and gripes about it are back in session. (Getty Images)

However, as a 30-year-old who's about to get married and is one-half of a DINK couple (Dual-Income, No Kids), I don't know that I've ever been happier than I have the last week or so.

My community swimming pool? Empty?

The neighborhood? Quiet?

I went out last night, and an area that is normally teaming with tourists was as dead as I had ever seen it because no parents are pulling their kids out of the first week of school to vacation in Central Florida.

It's bliss.

But I was also thinking about how much there is to gripe about when it comes to school, both as an adult and as a kid, so I figured that's what we'd do this week.

Why? Because I make the rules, that's why! One more outburst like that, and I'll hit your knuckles with a yardstick, mister!

On second thought, you're getting a week's detention!

A line of school buses. Not pictured: the bus drivers mentally preparing themselves for nine months of absolute hell. (Getty Images)

Buses

Before you can start griping about school, you have to get there, and there’s no better way to do that than by riding the bus.

Oh, wait; yes, there is: literally anything is better than the school bus.

Walking, getting a ride to school from your parents, riding a bike, riding a scooter, getting shot out of a cannon like a carny, etc.

The only person who has ever openly admitted to liking school buses is Vice President Kamala Harris, and only someone as unpopular as her could have such an absurd opinion.

I couldn’t stand the bus when I had to ride it, and I can't stand them now when I get stuck behind them when I’m out driving.

It’s terrible. You load a bunch of hellions finally freed from the shackles of a day of book learnin’, cram them in a big metal tube, and then some poor sap has to drive said big metal tube, all while making sure the kids don’t cause some kind of trouble.

Every year around this time, I see news stories about how there’s a shortage of school bus drivers. How could that be?!

Oh, because it's one of the worst jobs on the planet.

If someone said to me, "Matt — looking good by the way; you been dieting? — You either have to drive a bus full of middle schoolers to and from school for a year or go crab fishing on the Bering Strait," I'd have my rubber crab fishing suit on before they had even finished that sentence. 

Running Into School Pick Up Lines

Now, a bus alternative is to drive your kid to school, and that's all well and good, but why do so many school pickup lines cause traffic on par with trying to leave the stadium after a football game?

I have a pretty good idea of where the trouble spots are, but it never fails that sometimes we forget that. Between our house and the afternoon veterinarian appointment lies an elementary school with a pickup line the likes of which the road out front is not prepared to handle.

I've been burned so many times by this sort of thing, and I swear, some of the parents in that line drive like the only time they ever get behind the wheel of an automobile is to shuttle their  ̶h̶e̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ little angels to and from school.

There's got to be a better way. Some of us DINKs work from home but have to run our French bulldogs to the vet for an allergy shot, then grab lunch at the avocado toast place on the way home… I know, I hate us too.

Why are my dreams still haunted by high school even though I completed it and went on to get a college degree? (Getty Images)

Dreams About High School When You’re In Your Thirties

We all have recurring dreams, and for some reason, it seems to be super common for these to have something to do with school.

I have one school dream so frequently, I wish I could figure out what it means. It’s always some version of this: I’m back in high school, but for some reason I’ve forgotten all semester long that I have a second-period math class and haven’t been going. I can’t go to the class because the teacher is going to make a big deal of how "It’s such a privilege to have Mr. Reigle join us for once." But while he’s right about that, it’s super embarrassing for me, and it’ll also make me realize I’m going to fail the class.

But then, like clockwork, right before I wake up, I remember that I’m 30, already graduated high school, and, on top of that, already have a college degree, so who cares whether or not I go to calculus class?

I swear, I have some iteration of this dream at least once every two weeks, and I have no clue why. Why am I being haunted by school like this?

And I’m not alone. 

As I said, stuff like this is common. I mean, I think we’ve all had that dream where you can’t find the right classroom on the first day of school.

That might be the cruelest thing about your school years; they haunt you for the rest of your life.

Math

When I was in school, I was great at English (my 12th grade English teacher was not a fan of mine, however, so it cracks me up thinking about her having to see that, of all her students, I was the one who turned out to be a professional writer), a whiz at history, pretty solid at science, and while not setting any records, I could hold my own in gym class.

But, math? Nope.

I remember my Algebra II teacher had a chart with mathematical concepts on one axis and professions on the other, with dots on it representing which professions used those concepts. One day, I announced that I was going to pursue whatever profession used the fewest of these concepts.

That was a radio DJ, and while I never worked as a radio DJ, I'm proud to say that I hold a Radio-Television degree and used to drive the promotions van for a station that no longer exists.

So, in short: suck it, math.

But once you leave school, math still has opportunities to make your life miserable, like when your kids have math homework.

One thing that always concerns me about the prospect of maybe having kids someday is having to help them with their math homework.

Nothing can make you feel like a bigger dope than struggling with third-grade math as an adult. Like if I had to do some long division, I could probably get it done, but it would take a while, and it would not be pretty.

Who am I kidding? I'd probably just ask ChatGPT to do it and go back to doing cool non-math-related adult stuff.

Wherever this school is, it's not in the US. No school in America has lunch ladies who wear chef's hats. (Getty Images)

School Lunches

I'm going to zig when others zag when it comes to school lunches: sure, many of them are terrible. They've improved over the years, but even when I was going to a public high school a scant dozen or so years ago, there was some serious garbage getting dished out by ladies who looked like Chris Farley in his "Lunchlady Land" getup.

Believe me: I was in middle school when Michelle Obama decided to make the youth of America healthy by making everyone's lunches way worse.

But what I want to talk about are the good foods, and how, once you leave school, you will never be able to recapture their glory.

My school used to have some killer chicken nuggets, and I've come across some that are close, but they're always a little too crispy to hit that sweet spot between a subtle crunch and a little soggy.

There should be a restaurant that just replicates school lunches for adults, because eating that kind of slop really would be like getting in a time machine.

Even the smell can do that.

I still remember being in Kindergarten and them letting us test drive the cafeteria before first grade when we started going to school all day. They served chicken patties, and occasionally a restaurant (usually a Chick-fil-A) will have a similar smell as the cafeteria did that day, and it takes me back to being a kid.

So, if someone wants to start a restaurant like this, go ahead, just give me one of those gold cards that entitle me to free food.

If you really want to make it like school lunch, taxpayers should be footing the bill for my free grub.

Now that's an idea!

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That's it for this week's edition of The Gripe Report! Feel free to send in your own gripes!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com