The trouble with carpooling

Not long after we started EnviroMom, Heather boldly told me she was going to attempt at least two car-free days per week. I remember feeling scared: "I mean, crap, if she's going to try something crazy like that, then that means I'd better try it too." Really scared: "I'm not ready!! I mean, c'mon. Isn't the reuseable bags things green enough? But my car? The holiest of holies in American life! Some of us give our cars names for crying out loud. Do without your wheeled motor car for at least two days a week?!?" Deep breathing. Fend off panic attack...

One of the great things about Heather is that she's an idea person. She throws out a bold idea like going car-free, then promptly forgets about it after a while. I took pains not to remind her. So while my initial panic about going car-free had time to abate, little by little, we started to achieve car-free days without trying too hard: trip-chaining on drive days, walk to school and errand days, and alternating carpool days. What's great for us is that our kids go to the same preschool, our older kids are on the same soccer team, and most of our parks, community centers and hang-outs are the same. We shop at many of the same stores and run many of the same errands. It stood to reason that we'd improve our car-free stats by carpooling with one another every other day.

The trouble with carpooling is that we moms are in charge and momnesia rears its ugly head about every time we attempt a carpool. So we decided we should have a "conference call" every Sunday night to compare schedules and figure out which days would make sense to carpool, and who would drive on each day. Did it work? Well, factor in momnesia: we forgot to have that first conference call. And I was thinking we would carpool one Monday morning, while Heather had not. So we waited for a while and then when we realized we should have really discussed it Sunday we just drove on our own. This week, we actually did have our little Sunday powwow. Monday was my day to drive. And I'll be dog-goned if I didn't nearly forget to go and pickup Heather's son on the way to preschool. We were dinking around as we usually do during that killing-time zone before preschool, then I remembered we'd said we'd carpool and had to high-tail it on down to Heather's in order not to be late (don't want to waste any precious minutes when the kids can be in preschool). We did the carseat swap in record time. The kids were great. They love the carpool and always talk about amusing things in the backseat ("Did you know about The Nutcracker?" "Yummm. Nut crackers. I like crackers. Where do you buy them?").

I think if you can get past a somewhat rocky start with carpooling, it's easy enough to make it a way of life. Switching out car seats is also a big pain in the provervial fanny. I'll be so happy when all the kids are in boosters. But I like the idea of keeping cars off the roads on a regular basis. I think about how many EnviroMoms out there are boldly battling with momnesia and trying to carpool more and go car-free some of the time. I also like the idea that my kids will grow up thinking that carpooling is a regular part of life. How often do you carpool?