Get On The Bus...

It’s been almost three months since my last post, and while I said I was fully and totally committing myself to blogging, I lied. I kind of have a real job and a house to clean, a dog to walk, and a husband to entertain. Who am I kidding…I don’t walk the dog and I doubt the Mr. finds my “musings" entertaining.

However, I could not let today pass without a post. It’s a Monday, yes, but not just any Monday. For many children, as I have learned from Facebook ( my source on children ), it’s also the first day of school, which brings me to share this sad, yet entirely true tale with you.

It’s 1988 and I’m pretty damn cute. But it was on this very day in that year that I learned being “cute” gets you absolutely nowhere in life, and it certainly doesn’t get you to school on time.

My Mother had put my hair in a side ponytail job and I was wearing a bright green shirt with a Coca Cola logo. I think I had on white shorts, but I know I was carrying a baby blue book satchel and I was some kind of excited as that yellow school bus rounded the corner to pick me up for school. I waited patiently...well, half patiently really.. as my family gathered on the porch to waive me off. I have always been fiercely independent ( thank God), but perhaps my parents often judged my independence for intelligence beyond my years. Who knows.

What I do know is that no one really took the time to discuss riding the bus with me. Ever.

So, as the bus pulled up to the big brick front of Daphne Elementary School and all of the other pint-sized monsters disembarked, I stayed behind. And since I was small, no one noticed. Not even the junior high kids who were still on the bus awaiting their turn to be dropped off down the street. Nope. No one said a word, and there I sat, pretty as a peach, in my own little world just waiting to go to school….when I damn well felt like it.

We get to the junior high and the remaining children disembark, leaving satchel-toting, side-ponytail wearing Emily behind. Just me and the yellow bus and no one else….not even the driver who scurried off to teach Algebra.

When they found me, they escorted me to the principal, whereby some strange fate I found my older stepsister who was starting junior high the same day. I sat on a barstool behind the school desk and when she walked in, wearing a blue sailor style dress, I balled.
I just thought you could ride until you felt like it and then ask them politely to take you to school. But, as I rode back to the elementary school in the junior high principal’s Cadillac, I realized I was wrong. And I felt as stupid as a kindergartner can feel.

I know now that the “Oh, Bless Her Hearts” must have abounded, and that surely my teacher thought I was certain to be the classroom village idiot. I know they called my Mama, who surely must’ve wondered herself why I would do such a thing. What she didn’t know is that that call would become the first of many she’d get about me

Moral? There’s not one really, except this.

Just because another school year had begun and another year has passed, don’t ever forget what it feels like to be a child on the first day of school. It’s magical and sweet, no matter where you end up.