Bussin'

You need to know that the greatest excitement about attending a beautiful new school with a rooftop garden and a big field to run on is that school buses have no seat belts. This single fact has thrilled, elated and sustained my three children through their transition. And I made that up based on a vague childhood memory of bounding freely from seat to seat. Safety standards have emerged over the last 30 years but somehow I was confident and, as it mercifully happened, right.

The walk to the bus stop with the 3 kids and their backpack was noisy with chatter and excitement about the restraint free trip that awaited. Accompanied by a baby and a dog, we arrived full of nutritious breakfasts at the bus stop a mere 27 minutes prior to the bus' anticipated arrival at 7:19 am. Being the first day of a new school, the bus arrived to retrieve the kids a mere 15 minutes late. No need to get out the calculator, that's 42 minutes of anticipatory waiting. You see, I don't think that they really believed that there could possibly be no seat belts and the wait for discovery was no less than torture.

We hopped in the car as the doors to the bus closed and drove at breakneck pace with the camera clutched in hand to the school, ran through the parking lot and stood at the front stoop snapping photos as bus #710 pulled in and unloaded. The discovery had been delicious - as the kids came off the bus, one by one, they each whispered, overjoyed "there really are NO seat belts!!".

3:16pm came and went and when the bus arrived back at the same corner around 3:39pm that day, three of the same but slightly more tired, slightly happier, slightly more confident kids rolled down the stairs and into my arms. "How WAS the day" I asked each one as we stood in an excited circle. "Awesome". "Great". "I can't believe there are no seat belts".