Getting Ready for School

School is starting soon. Isn't it funny how all our lives are set up with school?  My life, even though I am not a teacher or a student, is set up by semesters of school.  Granted I do still have a child still in school but I "work" for a living so school should not matter to me.  But over the years it has.

Back to school sales indicate the fall has started.  Living in the northeast that means the leaves should be turning orange but in the southwest it meant that it was still beastly hot until late October.  The other thing back to school sales indicate is the traffic is once again going to be awful.  Going back and forth to work for people that get stuck behind those big yellow buses will probably not be joyful.

And what is it with these towns and cities that think no one has anywhere to go at 9 and 3.  They have schools that have no where to drop off kids except on the streets in front of the schools on a busy street.  Traffic backs up for miles and everyone is getting all upset.  Granted it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes for the buses to load or unload but people get very frustrated.

And if that isn't bad enough, what is it with these kids who wait in the house for the bus and when the bus gets there they walk as slow as humanly possible to get on the bus.  The worse part is nobody says anything to them. I would be giving my kid a good boot in the butt.  "You're holding up the traffic Junior, get it in gear!"  Isn't that what our parents used to say?  Oh wait, our parents didn't have to say that because we walked 10 miles to school and they (our parents) walked 25 miles to school in knee deep snow.  I wonder how deep the snow was in the southwest desert in September.

Then Christmas comes and we all get a 2 week break from the school bus hassles.  We can get to and from work again without getting stuck behind the big yellow buses and all those slow kids.  You know who I feel most sorry for;  the school bus drivers.  Those poor souls have to put up with the sulking in the morning when they go in and the crazy antics on the way home.  They have to listen to drivers cuss them out for being in the way, they have to deal with parents who are not happy because Johnny had a problem with someone on the bus and because some idiot like me writes a piece talking about the big yellow bus.

Well after Christmas, all the college kids leave and back to school the other creatures go much to the relieve of their parents until June.  Then we get a couple months off again from getting stuck behind the big yellow buses unless you are unlucky enough to live near a summer camp that uses buses to get the kids into camp.  If that is the case you are out of luck, I am sorry to say.

Now after all this is it any wonder that my life still runs on a semester base.  I follow those buses everywhere.  I see them go by my house in the mornings, I hear them pick up the kids.  I get stuck behind them at the local school.  I try to plan my day so that I do not go down the road where the school is at the time school gets out but somehow I always end up there at dismissal time.  I guess I should have been a teacher so that my biological clock could have been in sync with the school year.  Perhaps in my next life.

Good luck to all the school bus drivers, teachers and students that will be going off to school in the next couple of weeks.  Students please try to move a bit faster to the bus, you are just aggravating the world by being slow and one of us sitting in a car may be the person you sit in front of for a job someday.  We may just recognize you as the slow poke who held us up in the morning on our way to work.  That may not be such a good thing for you.