First Day of School

Or rather, the lack of going back.

This is the first fall since 1990 that I’m not out buying a new five subject notebook and getting a poor night’s sleep due to first-day-of-school anxiety. I still live in the district of my old high school and yesterday I saw a bus dropping kids off at my old bus stop as I headed to work. I was hit with a flash of nostaglia. I could almost feel the brown vinyl seat covers, the groves running down the center of the ailse, and the heat of too many bodies in no air conditioning. My car’s a/c was running while I watched the kids in the rearview mirror.

Further back I can see back to eighth grade, standing on those church steps in the middle of winter. It was not strictly my bus stop, but all my friends would trudge to the same stop to be together before school. I went out one morning with my hair still wet and it froze to my head. As an expirement I tried to see if it would snap off. It did. Senior year, only two of us still rode the bus together. We sat in the back and would sing country songs to the ire of the younger riders. We did not care. We had worked our way up to being the oldest kids on the bus.

I’m surprised at how much I miss riding a school bus after having completed four years of college. Those four years were highly disconnected and lacked the feel of community like high school did. From an outside perspectative, I’m suppose to be grown up since I’ve been supporting myself for years now, have a car in my own name, and have a job–no matter how crappy the pay is–I’m a grown up. Yet…I retired my high school backpack as a college freshman. That old purple bag held up for four years of rough and tumble high school life. I finally threw it away this summer.

I miss those brown vinyl seats, walking unsteadily down the bus ailse when the driver takes off too soon. Then I realize that part of my life is over. I’m stuck in the now; quickly approaching my mid-twenties. For the life of me I just cannot fathom the same enthusiam as I did for waiting back then.