What I Learned Today

A few years ago, excuse me, many years ago, as a toddler/pre-teen/young adult, I would get off the school bus and unwind after that hour long trip through the country roads.  It would take around ten minutes (or less) to get to school in the mornings but it would take an hour to get home after school.  (They would drive the same route before and after school.)  I came to one conclusion.  School bus' are evil.  A form of torture devised to carry young, untrained vigilantes who felt that the world was theirs and knife fights were just cool. Actually it wasn't that bad.  One of the funniest snippets of tv I can remember was an episode of the Simpsons (I haven't really watched it for years but I do remember this episode.) where Bart Simpson meets a one-armed man and in Bart's fascinating way asks him how he lost his arm. "Well, you know kid, when they tell you to keep your arm in the bus and you don't listen?  Well, there's consequences."  I don't remember exactly what he said but it involved him sticking his arm out the window and losing it because he wouldn't listen.  But anyway, bus' are simply rolling death traps that involve a lot of bench seats, children, and drivers who can't text but have to keep looking up at the three foot long mirror to see who is standing up or punching another student.  It's a formula for safety devised by the same government agency who devised putting the same amount of students in small class rooms and putting an adult who just spent four years more than some of those same students doing the same thing as those students for the past four years but now they're the authority figure meant to keep those students in line.  But they have a college degree so it all equals out.  So life gives us experience.  And prepares us for a life knee deep in life.  But that's not what I was wanting to write at all. What I was really going to say was back in those days of hour long bus rides and youth and life raveled was a young version of me.  And I would get off the bus and run down the driveway (it seemed like a mile long but really was only 5280 feet or 1609 meters) and after several minutes I would be home.  And mom would ask the question.  That same question.  Day after day.  "What did you learn in school today?"  She would also ask other questions.  Such philosophical intrigues such as "How much do you love me?"  In reply I would tell her the answer was dependent upon the contents of the cookie jar.  Yes, young readers, there were actually cookies positioned in large jars because cookies didn't always come from Walmart in plastic wrapping or in paper baggies.  There was a time when cookies were sold but it was much cheaper to make them in your home.  And the aroma would waft through the house and they would be all warm from the oven and you would burn your fingers trying to get one off the cookie sheet and mom would yell "Get out of the oven you fool!! They'll be ready in a couple of minutes."   Mom would make these "no bake" cookies with cocoa and oats and they would be fresh off the waxed paper. Awesome stuff.  I really miss her now that she's gone.  She lives all the way cross town and it's just so inconvenient to take that long ten minute drive to visit her.  And there's hardly any fresh cookies anymore.  But I did learn something every day.  She would ask the question and I would shrug my shoulders because for some reason it was hard to summarize all those classes into a coherent five minute spiel.  She was just trying to be kind and involved in my life but the question seemed bizarre to me at that young age.  What did I learn in school today?  Do you want me to explain what a hypothesis is?  Or the rudimentary equations of higher math?  Or breakdown English into a simple explanation?  The question was really rather complicated but she was just being mom.  She just wanted to be a part of my life.  She wanted to know that I was getting something from all that free learnin' about readin', riting, and rithmetic.  But looking back on it now I did learn something much more important.  I learned patience that comes with an hour entrapment on a dusty, smelly bus.  I learned discipline from sitting in classrooms.  I learned respect for authority as I sat there bound by an unwritten contract developed between my parents and the school district.  And I learned there's nothin' better than a warm cookie at the end of that day.  Sometimes life is so simple it's complicated.  My name is Rueuhy and I approve this blog.