Wednesday, February 09, 2005
The place I work has facilities located in 3 different buildings. One of them is just across the street from where I work and the third is located about 9 miles away in Tyngsboro, which is the next town over. Today as I often do, I was driving back to my office from our Tyngsboro facility and found myself following a school bus. Because this town is a formerly-rural-but-now-heavily-developed type area, there are numerous little cul-de-sac type developments full of HUGE new homes, running off the winding main road. What that means around here is that once you get behind a bus, you will stop maybe every 150 yards along the road, as it stops at the end of each one of these roads to pick up the kids for school, who on cold days are often waiting in a string of idleing cars with a parent. This slows your commute WAY down. But today, despite my being in a bit of mood, that did not really bother me too much. It was a very nice, crisp morning and I was finding the ride to be a nice break in my work day which had started very early, and got off to a less than perfect start.

Anyhow, as the bus stoped at the end of one of these roads there was only 1 car waiting. It was one of those giant $50K Lexus SUVs, and was on the side of the road opposite from the bus, about a car-length back from the intersection. Once the bus stopped and had its lights flashing, stopping a small line of cars on both sides of the road, the driver side door of that SUV opened, the mom (obviously dressed for work) got out, walked around and opened the passanger side door. A tiny kid hopped out, maybe 4 or 5 years old at most, toting a little backpack. Mom proceded to walk the little kid to the edge of the road, put her hand on the back of his head, and gave him a little nudge into road towards the bus. He ran into the road, around the front of the bus, and climbed in. A pretty ordinary happening, really. But what struck me was the mom. As soon as that kid had taken his first step into the road, as soon as her hand was no longer touching his head, she had turned around and was headed back to her truck. She turned back to climb into her truck just as the bus was starting to pull away. Her back was to that little, tiny kid the whole time. And even though it was all of maybe 20 seconds, I found myself thinking, "She didn't even watch her kid cross the street, she didn't even wave to the kid. What a jerk." Just as quickly as that thought blew into my head, it blew out again. And I actually felt sorry for her. It is most likely that she has utterly no idea just how much that big beautiful Lexus is really costing her.
thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 8:08 AM
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