by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

When I was a kid, we walked to school: well, OK...If your school was not in your "neighborhood", then you got a ride of one kind or another. But, if your school was reasonably close, you walked: Sun, rain or snow, you got there under your own steam.

Today, coming home after dropping the urch-let at her school (8 miles [mol] from our house: walking is not an option here,) I got behind a school bus on Brown Road. Now, Brown Rd is about 1.5 miles long, from one end to the other. At one end of Brown Rd. there is an elementary school. Mornings around 9am, there are a lot of school busses on Brown Rd. So, here I am behind this school bus, when its lights come on and it stops to pick up a kid. OK, this is at the far end of Brown Rd., so I'm cool with this. But then we get to the start of the hill going down to Rte. 202/206, about 1/4 mile from the school and the bus stops to pick up another kid. Hmmm. Then, with the school actually in sight, it stops to pick up another kid. When I say insight, I mean no more that a football field's distance away.

I'm wondering, "why?" Is it because we don't want the kids hanging out before the bell rings? (All the school busses arrive and then sit, with their cargo still onboard, until they are giving the "ok" to open the doors.) Or is it because today's parents live in fear of the predators that live amongs us? Whatever the reason, it just hammers home to me how much things have changed in just my lifetime.

I think I need to reread Toffler's Future Shock series again...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005