When I was a little kid our bus stop was at the end of our street, and more than just a place to catch a ride to school (or, more frequently, to just barely miss catching a ride to school) it was the first place where I interacted with a large group of peers, most of whom were not necessarily my friends.
Some weren’t my friends because they lived on the other side of the busy road that intersected with our sleepy street; a road which we were forbidden to cross, and which roared with traffic each morning as we waited for the bus. Some of those kids weren’t my friends because they were much older, and it was unthinkable for 3rd graders to interact with 5th graders. 5th graders were big, and they sat at the back of the bus and used curse words. And some of those kids weren’t my friends because they were jerks who liked to make fun of me because I didn’t have a Starter jacket, or because I didn’t have Reebok Pumps. We all waited for the bus together, and most days it seemed like that’s all we had in common.
We were a perfect representation of modern society using mass transit. Many people arriving at different times, some rude and inconsiderate, some trying to blend in with the background, all strung together by a common means of transportation. The metro is the big yellow school bus for adults.
So as I drove to work this morning and passed the bus stop that I pass every day on my way to work, I was a little bit shocked at how the kids were working together to accomplish a common goal. They had lined up according to height, with the tallest students at the left and the height diminishing to the right as the diagonal line of elementary school students faced the street and gesticulated toward the oncoming traffic in unison, making the universal field-trip sign to get truckers to blow their horns. A quick pumping of the fist pulling an invisible cord connected to an invisible airhorn that was sounded in absentia by the passing traffic, including me. A quick honk was more than worth it to see them laugh and cheer.
I can only imagine that the people sleeping in the houses nearby wondered what all the honking was about.
