Future fender benders

Today on the way to the cafeteria, I ran into a stumbling block. Getting the kids to lunch this year has been a logistical nightmare. All of third-grade and all of second-grade go at exactly the same time. The third-grade classes walk down their hallway and make a left-hand turn into the main hallway, but then they're expected to be on the right hand side of the hall to enter the proper cafeteria door. The second-grade classes come into the main hallway from outside and are expected to be on the left-hand side of the hall to enter THEIR cafeteria door.

Somewhere in there, the lines have to cross, and as Egon said in Ghostbusters, "Crossing the streams would be bad."

So today, I find myself stuck at the corner, with a wall of second graders to somehow get through. So I thought I would suggest taking turns, in much the same way that cars (are supposed to) take turns at a four-way intersection.

I might as well have been speaking Klingon.

Even with me standing right there, trying to direct the kids to cross over, one at a time, NONE of them understood. Every time I told a second grader to cross over, three more would try to follow her. Every time I directed a third grader to cross over, three more would try to walk right past me.

When we had finally gotten past the mixmaster, one of my kids said, "We were kind of like cars in a traffic jam."

To which I had to reply, "If this had been with cars, there would be a huge wreck scene right now."

I am truly worried about the next generation of vehicle operators...