School has started in our neck of the woods. My kids are all grown now so I do not have to do the school “thing” anymore. My involvement in our local schools is now limited to dodging the school buses.
I stopped to get gas at a station on US31 yesterday. I did my business and started to leave when every school bus in the free world appeared out of what seemed to be nowhere. I found myself stuck in the middle of a sea of school bus yellow. I could not see anything beyond that and was close to despair for my future. Turns out, the road I was attempting to enter US31 from was the very road that leads to the “lair” of the school bus fleet for that Southside community. It was at that time of day that the buses were heading back out to take the students home. I never saw so many buses at one time in my life.
We did not have buses when I was a young ‘un, no sir. We had it rough. I walked or rode my bike the three blocks to school. It was hard but there were certain “advantages.” We could and did slip into a nearby alley on the way home and did what one did back in those days. We did stuff like, oh, I don’t know, smoke cigarettes and talk smack to one another. Once in a while, a fight might break out. That was almost always because somebody insulted somebody in school or, more common, over a girl. This was during the time when we all were just beginning to figure out that girls did not necessarily have “cooties.” For the life of me, I never did figure out why anybody would fight over a girl. I did it myself three times and was never the better because of it.
A Commoner's Life ™ 