This week marks the beginning of the second half of Griffin's school year.
It also means that I have survived half a year of my new morning routine - which differs from last year in that I no longer drive two boys to school, but instead drive Griff 3.2 miles up the road to the school bus transfer station every school day.
Griffin could (which would mean me too) get up 40 minutes earlier, walk to a corner in a backtracking sort of way, and take two buses to school, but that would mean getting up at 5:30 instead of 6:10. And neither of us are capable of that.
As it stands, we now try to leave the house just before 7, so we can miss the other buses that dart all over the block and neighborhood.
Busing, on this island community, is a big deal. Everyone has school bus service to the various publics and one parochial school and each morning, 13 big yellow buses leave the island and travel up to 15 miles out for the students at off island private schools and a handful of alternative programs*.
To do this, the 13 buses pick up all over the island and then drive to the transfer station where about 12-15 spoiled, late sleeping students and their drivers wait for the transportation boss to march out in is dayglo vest and give a signal. At that point, students switch buses if they have to and those driven in walk/run to get a seat on the proper bus.
This is my usual view:
But there is a lot wrong with this picture. Namely, the red van on the left and the white car on the right. Neither of these cars should be where they are - they should be back at the edge of the parking lot where I am. However, this community has a high percentage of people who park wherever they please, it's uncanny.
The white car almost has an excuse because the kid that gets out of it is very short legged, but that red van makes my blood boil. Before the signal to get out of the car is given, that guy starts flashing his lights and turn signals and his children burst out of the van early.
And invariably, that guy cuts me off (or tries to anyway) on the way out of the parking lot (we leave after the boss gives another grand hand signal), in a way that is dangerous because also invariably, there is always some car racing in late with a kid who overslept or insisted on stopping for coffee on the way.
Mr. Red Van either glares at me as he cuts me off (giving me the opportunity to take note of his unfortunate facial hair) or tailgates me 2.8 miles of the way home.
Even among the parents who park and wait where they are supposed to, there is bound to be some drama like the chain smoking Mom who never backs all the way in:
She drives a very tiny child and frequently delays his leaving the vehicle, which had him almost getting run down a few weeks ago.
Additionally, there is a bus driver person who parks her car in the middle of the bunch of us instead of using the driver lot behind the station. I have a feeling that she is getting paid for the few minutes each day that she does not work and I'm a little confused because most all of the bus drivers look so much like each other that they might be sisters/cousins or just a bunch of woman who have not updated their hair style since 1989.
However, I am grateful that I no longer have to make two bridge trips each morning, that G's bus driver is honest enough to routinely return his phone, lunch money, ipod or whatever else falls out of his pockets every morning, and that I get to stay in the car and not step foot in this:
*5 years ago we moved here towards the end of the school year and the boys were bused back from their grammar school on a bus that first stopped at the alternative school. Dinner conversation was peppered with "and then the kid with the safety pin in his lip said" and "that girl who said she was going to punch us if we didn't stop looking at her" until that bus driver insisted that the boys be switched to a younger bus.
