As a kid I was obsessed with school buses. I spent nearly half of my childhood pretending to be a school bus driver, riding my bike around in circles along my street. Each day I would choose a landmark, say, my mailbox, to be the school, and from there I would embark on my route. At each “bus stop” (a designated crack in the sidewalk, the back of my mom’s car) I’d grab the pretend door handle to open the pretend door and let off the pretend students to return home to their pretend families. I can only imagine what the neighbors thought when they looked out their window for the 6th day in a row to find me sitting on my bicycle, staring up at the sky, screaming “SIT DOWN!” into my pretend overhead mirror.

 

Honey, he’s doing it again. Bless his heart.

 

I loved that school buses came in different models, some older and some new. I loved that each possessed its own unique bus number and followed its own unique route. I loved that it was a bus’s job to be reliable, weaving through the same residential roads twice a day every day for the entirety of the school year. A consistency my childhood didn’t otherwise know.

 

On my luckiest elementary school days, I got to go home with a friend and experience a new bus, a new route, a new neighborhood for the first time. One day in first grade I went home with my friend Brandon. His bus was number 2496. A newer model. More sophisticated and technologically advanced than my own. The door was automatic, opening with only the push of a button. The cracked navy seats smelled of fresh leather and rubber. The materials were darker, more premium than any bus I’d been on in the past. The students around me didn’t bat an eye.

 

As Brandon’s bus and each bus behind it poured out of the school yard, my nose was glued to the window. A fleet of yellow hornets barreling down the highway, each peeling off one by one into their respective neighborhoods to complete their respective routes. I watched through the backdoor as my own bus turned into my own neighborhood and thought about how lucky I felt to not be on it. Today I got to be a part of something much better.

 

When we turned into Brandon’s neighborhood, I made sure to memorize the route. We carved our way through cul de sacs, loops, and avenues that I’d never known by just riding to Brandon’s house on my own. I was surprised to find how many streets emptied out into each other. How smooth and seamless the route flowed together. If I could live in any neighborhood, I thought to myself, I’d live in this one. I imagined what my life would feel like if I did.

 

What captured my attention more than anything was not the roads of the neighborhood, but the homes. They were huge! Shapes, materials and designs I’d never seen before. With every stop we arrived at a house more grand than the one before. As each of my schoolmates got off, one after the other, I became increasingly enamored and increasingly confused. Wait, that’s the house Chase Anderson lives in? What the heck??

 

By the time we arrived at Brandon’s house, I felt small and slightly embarrassed. An imposter. Envious of the lives my peers seemed to live without my knowing. I wanted my house to be big and my bus to be new. I longed for a reality where I might one day have what they had. Where I might one day have what I lacked.

 

A few weeks later, back in the mundanity of my own neighborhood, my bus driver came down with a cold and left us in the hands of a substitute. Unfamiliar with the ins and outs of our route, the substitute driver asked each student to come up to the front of the bus as our house approached so that we may instruct her where to stop. When we turned down my street, I did as I was told and made my way toward the front of the bus. Somewhere along the way, I came up with a grand idea.

 

“It’s that big white one there on the left,” I said, pointing proudly.

 

She slowed to a halt in front of the biggest house in the neighborhood. Three storeys. Wrap-around porch. Gigantic staircase leading up to the double front doors. “This one?” she asked.

 

“Yes, this one.” I said, lying through the smile on my face. “Thank you!”

 

She opened the door.

 

I crossed the street in front of the bus with my chin held high. I walked toward that house like I belonged in it. Running up the staircase toward the front door like my family was inside, ready to greet me. I slowed down as I neared the top, making time for the bus to pull away behind me. One hand on the door, I watched as the bus made its way down the rest of the street and disappeared into nothingness. The coast was finally clear.

 

Hoping my presence on the property was unsuspected, I turned on my heels and marched my way down the stairs. I cut quickly across the grass and stepped into the safety of the yard next door. My yard. The yard I grew up in and rode bikes around nearly every day. I walked toward my front door, passing the mailbox box that often served as my pretend school. Catching my breath, I entered my home like I didn’t just betray it. Like I never considered it to be utterly and shamefully not enough.

 

____

 

 

A few things I’m thankful for:

- The opportunity to teach dance

- Patience, trust, and faith

- Everything and everyone I have in my life!

 

 

Pop culture things I’m thinking about:

- Hacks Season 3 is so good (still working through it)

- Bluey Season 2, Episode 26 - “Sleepytime”

- Clairo Album is quaint :)

 

 

A random journal entry:

11.28.21

when you let go of your idea of someone,

you allow them to be more

 

when you let go of your idea of something,

you allow it to be more

 

when you let go of your idea of yourself,

you allow yourself to be more

 

when you let go of your idea of life,

you allow life to be more

 

 

____

 

Thanks for reading :) Talk again soon.