We rode the bus to school.
[When our bus driver managed to meet their bus driver and an exchange could be negotiated.]
Just a little background: We lived 20 miles from town. The bus driver refused to drive the entire distance. Instead, he agreed to meet us at a corner nine miles from our ranch.
Hence the name 'Nine-Mile Corner'.
You wonder how these things get titled?
Well, now you know.
Mom was usually chosen as 'Harried Driver #1' shuttling sleepy offsrping into the car, then hare-ing down the road at sixty-miles-an-hour to facilitate the aforementioned meeting.
Usually we were on time.
But that only meant there was a possibility of meeting the bus because Mr. Bus Driver often went the other way.
Sigh.
But that has nothing to do with this story . . .
Mentioning Kathy yesterday reminded me of . . . Kathy.
Okay, yes. I'm predictable.
Now riding on the bus can be long and boring.
One can stare out the window and see exciting things: A coyote. Antelope.
The occasional pheasant.
But most of the time it is merely: Prairie.
Beautiful. But repetitious.
So Kathy would make up her own entertainment.
And she was good at it.
On this occasion, she introduced me to Bus Script. Or Bus Writing as it was also known.
Okay, you have to know that we sometimes did homework on the bus.
And our writing was affected by the bounce and jounce of the great lumbering vehicle as it negotiated sketchy gravel roads.
So Kathy made the writing the thing.
She would hold her pencil at the approved angle and then just move it across the page.
The bus actually did the writing.
Genius. Right?
I can't tell you how many scribblers I used up in this pursuit.
A few.
And somehow, I just can't help but think that, if I truly knew how to speak 'bus', the vehicle and I could have had a legitimate conversation.
Who knows what I could have learned?
Thanks, Kathy.
