Our new routine is to get up each morning and go to the health club before dawn. Around here dawn comes late, so I’m pulling out of my garage about seven. As I turn the corner onto Bacon School Road I see three students huddling together in the dark, waiting for the school bus. Further up the road giant headlights lumber toward them and me.
School busses have always reminded me of egg cartons on wheels and their young passengers, each seated one behind the other, are the eggs that need to be transported ever so carefully.
The boxy orange bus passes me on the way to pick up its cargo, and I hug the edge of the road to give it room. Up ahead is another egg carton, traveling in the same direction that I am; and I follow it for about three miles. I’m thinking I need to leave at a different time, since the school is on the route to the health club; and I could experience this pattern Monday through Friday.
I watch the bus flash its lights and make all the traffic behind it stop. I’m amazed that children are climbing onto busses so early, but when Boxy Orange and I arrive at the school it’s pulsing with activity. Busses are pulling in one driveway, stopping in front of the school, emptying, and then pulling out the other driveway. Everything is done in shadows, and I wonder if school actually starts before the sun comes up.
As the bus that led my line of traffic pulls into the schoolyard, I continue on my way, recalling that the only time I ever rode a school bus was in first grade.
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