Back to School

Becky dragged herself down to the bus stop as if she were in slow motion with twenty-pound weights tied to each leg. Her purple coat and backpack completed her look for the beginning of the new school year. Turning and looking over shoulder, she saw her mother waving her on to hurry up because the bus would be there shortly.

The day had started with the sound of the alarm clock ringing in Becky’s ears and her mother’s entrance to the room then gulping down oatmeal, the argument over snack choices, brushing her teeth, her mother combing her curly hair as she looked up passively with doe eyes and freckled cheeks. Finally, mom bundled her up as if she were going on an expedition to the South Pole finishing up with a kiss on the forehead as she pulled the wool hat down over her curly mop of hair. A little mother’s spittle (the strongest hair spray known to mankind) corralled the curls and directed them away from her face like a bunch of Chrysanthemums bursting forth on a spring morning. Mom had opened the door sending her on the way. Becky walked like someone condemned man on the way to execution. No matter how slowly she walked it didn’t take long to transverse the two hundred feet to the bus stop. As she arrived the bus pulled up and opened the door. Becky climbed the stairs seeing her best girlfriend from last year smiling at her with an empty seat that she had saved.

Maybe this would not be the absolutely worst, most terrible day ever, after all.

Jim – Feb. 2019