Lessons from the Bus Stop

When I was but a wee tot making my way through the mean streets of the city, the only bus stop I knew involved tokens (do they still have those?) and a string you pulled to make sure the driver didn’t pass by your destination. Making too much noise might just get you stop skipped out of pure spite. The most exciting thing you could hope for was the arrival of one of those extra long buses with the accordion part in the middle. The most sought after seat was always the accordion seat.  Today’s modern suburban school bus stops are a whole different world. First of all, a simple backpack on the ground is all it take to assure you place in line. What I can’t figure out is why having a place in line matters. There seems to be more than enough seats for everyone and, there’s no accordion seat as far as I can tell. No matter, because you’ll be too busy playing basketball, football, scootering, and generally messing up the neighbor’s lawns by any means imaginable to even notice when the bus pulls up. Luckily a chorus of Moms will ring out “THE BUS!” Mom’s at the bus stop seem to come in two flavors: I’ve given up and I’m wearing sweats or I’m incredibly overdressed and not really going anywhere after the children leave (Mom’s who work outside the house are in short supply at our stop). Dads, on the other hand, always seem to fall into the former flavor. The sights you’ll see at the bus stop. It’s not uncommon to see a King-Kong missing a leg and an arm (presumably from a fight with a T-Rex), any number of dogs running wild, small siblings attempting to stow away on the bus, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, swords, pirates, hot dog vendors, and even the occasional random neighbor who has no school-aged children but still hangs around at the bus stop (Is that creepy? I can’t decide). It’s quite a menagerie to behold, quite a difference from the orderly line of well mannered young people we must have been. Oh, and if you happen to fall in the mud while waiting, no worries, you can go home, change and get a ride to school from a surly parent. In my day we would have just gone to school muddy; but then again, if we ran out of tokens, we had to go home and get a ride from a surly parent.