Day Ten: The Wheels on the Bus

30-Day Blog Challenge 

Share a Story From Your Childhood

  

Prompts like this one totally put me on the spot... and when I'm on the spot I can't think... at all. lol  I was hoping to come up with a funny "what I was like as a kid" story, but I'm only coming up with stories about my brothers (there are a lot!), stories from middle and high school (that I don't think count as "childhood") and then one not-so-funny story about me... so, I guess I'll go with the not so funny story.

For my early elementary school years I lived on a cul-de-sac in Moses Lake, Washington.  Starting in kindergarten I had to walk just under a mile from my house to a local elementary school (grades 4-6) where I would catch the bus to either the kindergarten or, later, the early elementary school (grades 1-3).  In the early years my mom would walk with me, but as I got older I would walk with my friends*.

One day, early on in my school career, my mom and I were making the morning walk to school.  It was really foggy outside and we could barely see a foot in front of us.  About halfway there my mom noticed that I wasn't carrying my lunch box.  She assumed that I'd just dropped it and told me not to move while she went back up the block for it.  I stood there and waited... and waited... and waited.  I don't know exactly how long I waited for (time is completely different in the eyes of a child) but I waited so long that I was afraid that I was going to miss my bus to school!  As I have always been a conscientious student (even in kindergarten! lol) I know that I did not what this to happen, so I continued the walk to the bus on my own.  I got there, in tears, but in one piece.  I told a friend's grandmother what had happened, and I got on the bus and went to school.

Apparently my friend's grandmother found my mother and told her that I was alright, and then the two of them (and my lunch) got in her car and drove to my school.  My mother was crying, I was crying, but everything was o.k.  My mother ended up having to go much farther back that she'd anticipated for my lunch box and when she finally made it to my "spot" I was no longer there.  She's just lucky I'm a responsible independent girl... if I wasn't and had made a break for it, SCHOOL probably wouldn't have been my destination! =)


*It's sad how 10 years ago allowing your 8 year old and her friends to walk a mile alone to school together was ok... however now it's almost unheard of.  Sometimes I miss THAT world...