January 28, 2009

SNOWTF!? Pt. 5- The bus ride from Antarctica

The ride home from school today was so perilous that I decided to write about it. First of all it started snowing like the wrath of god during 6th or 7th period today (Deja Vu?) and by the end of the school day we were practically buried. Everything was canceled. I mean EVERYTHING. They even said everything was canceled over the school's PA. Then they said that everything that all those canceled activities had been re-canceled. And what might one do instead of going to the after-school activity that had just received a double dose of cancellation? All of those things are canceled too. Was anybody planning to dance? Nope. Swim? No. Wrestle? No way. Play basketball? Nay. Band concert? not even close. How about some shoveling?

And of course the snow's final curse was the inevitable cancellation of everybody's ride home. We were standing out there like penguins watching the empty road behind the school remain empty for way to long. Some lucky people got their bus reasonably on time, but of course I don't get home late enough on a regular day. The principals actually started herding us inside to continue waiting. When bus 172 finally showed up (after I'd seen buses 173, 171, 175, 170, 171.69, 154/6x+2, 170.com, 172-3, 1-800-not-172, 17%, $17.20, 42, and so many more), I looked at my watch. "Hmm, I am usually at home by now". Oh well, sometimes you just have to be patient. While I was being patient, bus 172 was taking its good ol' time in the crazy conditions. Getting up one particular street involved pulling more than halfway up, running into a snowbank, hearing sounds I had no idea a bus could make, then painfully backing up down the street to try again (can you back up down a hill? Does that mean you back down going up? I'm pretty sure it should be the other way around). Once this process had been repeated a couple of times, the requirement of nearly running down a pedestrian had to be met. Apparently, my friend Rachel (who lives on the street that we'd just been stuck on for half an hour) fell in to a snowbank that just happened to be right next to an out-of-control school bus that I just happened to be on. She had the living fershizzle scared out of her, but fortunately lived to send my a text message about it. Then when we finally got up, down, around, over, and through to my stop, I faced some snow of my own. I'm used to trudging through the woods to get home, but I was not expecting to have to vault over the Berlin wall at the end. But I did, and ended up kind of wet. Could have been worse, though.

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