“Oh My Gosh - You Have Legs!” – The Ballad of the Carpool Mom

It all started at a PTA meeting. Another mother, who I knew from around the neighborhood, came up to me with a look of (fake) astonishment. “Oh my gosh – you have legs!” she said. I thought that was kind of a strange thing to say, but she continued: “I have known you for years, and I have never seen you not behind the wheel of that green Chrysler van. I have only seen you from here (she pointed to her waist) up- I had no idea you had legs!” That elicited a round of laughs from the other moms, and me as well, but it got me thinking. I live in my car. To school. “Mommy I forgot my lunch at home.” Back to school. To ceramics. To Little League. From ceramics. From a friend’s house. To their cousins’. From youth groups. On, and on, and on. Some days I’m in the car for literally hours. It’s a never-ending circular tour of our town. Full stop.

Now there are lots of things you can do in the car. The cellphone (hands free of course). Radio, but I can’t seem to find a channel that only has good news. Audiobooks, OK, but that’s a commitment and I do a lot of short hops, hard to stay focused. But at around the time of the abovementioned fateful PTA meeting I was trying to figure out how to work some type of exercise routine into my crazy schedule. Separately, the elderly mother of one of my relatives with whom I’m close, was starting to slip into the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and I had been reading about mental exercises and ways to prevent such things from developing. These things were all on my mind when I bumped into my friend Malkie, and then everything clicked. Malkie is a mom of five, and an experienced fitness trainer who has developed lots of interesting fitness methods including the AquaTread water fitness program. I bounced my idea off her: Did she think we could develop a CD for carpool moms like us, with fun and interesting mental exercises, and physical exercises that you could do while sitting and waiting in the car? The rest as they say was history.

We spent months researching, developing and testing. My hubby came up with the name “Carpool Karma.” Then it was time to record the CD and start a company, which we named Newrobics. Our initial product, the Carpool Karma CD, will be available April 7. The journey into momtrepreneurship has already been fascinating and we hope it will continue to be exciting and creative. We’ll continue to blog about our experiences from time to time. Wish us luck!