Drive-through tips

It was Tuesday evening at about 5:45. That put us, thanks to some providence with the traffic lights and a mild enough day that we had been able to forego the time-consuming snowsuit shuffle, squarely in the drive-through lineup of our favourite purveyor of fast food.

Squeezed between my nine-year-old's piano lesson and my six-year-old's Sparks' meeting, our visit to the drive-through is as much a weekly ritual as chicken fingers and American Idol. Certainly our schedules have evolved over the months and years. But there always seems to be one "crazy day," during which a meal in the minivan seems the most sensible solution to even contemplating the inclusion of dinner on the evening's program.

Thanks to this reality, I have, in the more than nine years I've been doing the parenting gig, become something of an expert on the drive-through dance. Don't scoff.

Getting the most from your drive-through years is an undervalued art. I think back on those early days of backseats swimming in chocolate milk and overturned pots of ketchup -- and shudder. Today, I know better.