School bus...

The boy has been very excited to start taking the school bus. In fact, he was chirping on and on about the school bus before he even started going to school.



After having him settle in to the school routine for a few weeks we decided to allow him to ride the school bus after the holiday break.  In preparation for the ride, we called the school and got the number for the bus barn.

I promptly lost the telephone number and decided to stop in at the bus barn when I was in town one day.  After leaving a message with someone in attendance, the bus-barn-boss-guy called me back and said that it'd take a few days for him to come out and assess whether or not we have a suitable location for a stop.

In the meantime, he said, there is a stop 600m north and around the corner from us.  Well... I think it'd be closer to head cross-country over our property to get to the nearest stop (but I didn't say that to the boss-guy). So, I was just as happy to drive him to school as I was to sit at a bus stop and wait.

Last Friday rolled around and the bus-barn-boss-guy called and said that he'd had a chance to see our driveway and that it was more than suitable for a safe bus stop. As an aside he mentioned that he and his wife had also looked at this property when it was for sale a few years ago (it would seem that everyone looked at this place...). He also gave us the bus number and driver's name.

And so, all weekend we would conduct random boy-quizzes.  Hey! Boy! What's your bus drivers name? What's your bus number? Who do we listen to on the bus? Where do we sit? Do we walk around?  We even walked up to the top of the driveway a few times and practiced standing there, not too close to the road, pretending to wait for the blinky lights and stop sign to be activated.

Last night he had a difficult time settling down for bed. Predictably, this morning found him super excited, a little anxious but more than prepared to take the school bus.  And so he got his snow pants and jacket on, donned his tuque, mitts and snow boots and we headed out the door to wait for the bus.

We listened carefully as the tell-tale roar approached at the appointed time.  We shifted our feet, moved anxiously towards the shoulder of the highway and prepared for our first bus-riding experience as the big yellow bus drove right by us at a very fast rate of speed.   The driver didn't slow down, didn't look at us. Heck, there wasn't even a flicker of the brake lights.

I was pretty upset.  Not quite someone-has-stolen-wood-from-me angry... but pretty close.  I tried to temper my irritation with the thought that this guy has probably been driving by here for years, it's an honest mistake and not really a big deal.

I think I was more upset because of all the preparations we'd made with the boy and all his excitement and anxiety were for naught this morning.  He, however, was fine to take the car - although we did end up being a bit late for class.