School Days

That familiar school bus is making it's way down Old Prairie Creek Road that winds back to our house. If I come home from shopping 4ish, I get behind the bus. It makes half a dozen stops out our way, not too many kids live out our road. They always look like pack mules carrying backpacks, lunchboxes and jackets! Tired little disheveled bodies pour off the bus and run wildly up their driveways or roads. I was a city kid and never road the school bus. Our daughters did and complained unmercifully about the torture they endured on the bumpy, un~airconditioned buses. There was always a mean driver, or a kid that picked their nose, or just the fact that it came so darn early! I would drive them to the main road where we would wait patiently for the bus to round our curve and stop. We'd listen to the radio and talk. Great talks about friends and feelings, right and wrong, meaningless talk that makes Moms and daughters bond.

Dan Henshel used to read the school menu on the radio each morning. He would make the lunch meal sound as good as he could...Chicken with a biscuit on top, creamy mashed potatoes, green beans, yellow cake with chocolate icing, and when he got to the end he would always say "And milk-y." It drove Stephanie crazy...she would go on and on about how stupid it was! She's sending her boys off this morning to another year of school. I bet she's thinking about milk-y!