Bus Drop Off | TheaterFire

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Prestigious_Stay7162@reddit

When I was a kid the bus dropped us off in front of a pit of molten lava and we had to swim across it with a knife in our teeth and fight zombies on the other side in order to get home.

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mommy2libras@reddit

If you'd said Las Cruces or Albuquerque I'd totally believe you. I watch a lot of arrest videos & the ones from NM are fucking WILD. And I say that as someone who lives on the Florida panhandle.

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Any-Practice-991@reddit

Honestly, it's really weird that you know we are even a state. I meet so many people who don't. Even after watching "cops."

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I love that your license plates say New Mexico, USA. I lived in El Paso for a minute when I was a kid and this always cracked up my dad. It’s crazy that people are so dumb that you have to remind other Americans that you are also American.

New Mexico is the shit though. Mountains, deserts, green chiles, hippies, artists, Hispanic and Indigenous food and culture. I hate camping, but Timberon and White Sands make good arguments for it in different ways. We used to go three-wheeling on weekends, back when they sold tiny three-wheelers to kids (I was slightly too young, but I drove the larger ones when I got older). Dad pulled the sled behind his ATV and I zoomed through the snow in the mountains.

Everyone flipped their ATVs at some point except me. The dunes were crazy dangerous for three-wheelers! I can’t believe those were ever legal, even in the 80s. But damn, we had fun. New Mexico Gen X-ers rock hard. Even being close for a short time was awesome.

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Ornery-Character-729@reddit

I never figured out what the problem was with 3 wheelers. I never had a problem. But I was mostly riding through the woods.

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SidewaysTugboat@reddit

The problem was the instability combined with the location of the gas tank. They flipped easily and landed on top of the rider. The gas tank was extremely hot and usually fell directly on top of a leg, causing severe burns. My cousin loved to fish-tail on his and pop wheelies. He got third-degree burns on one leg after a bad fall. He was 14 at the time. He kept riding after that and I don’t remember his behavior changing much, but we were careful to make sure we were out of sight of our parents before he pulled stunts when I was riding with him.

ParsnipDecent6530@reddit

And then breaking bad happened

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diamond@reddit

Yeah that didn't help our image, but it did jump-start the local film industry, so I'll always be grateful to Vince for that.

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Moneypenny_Dreadful@reddit

a few of my friends I went to HS with went to College of Santa Fe back when it was a big film destination. I don't know what happened, but it was considered an entertainment producing hub back in the 90s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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626337@reddit

we got some Real Crazy here.

i am OBSESSED with NM police body cam videos.

I'm also from Phoenix. Your comment cracked me up and was way too accurate. There was a car that was parked near our bus stop very frequently, and it creeped us out so much. I remember when we finally all realized how creepy it was, all at once. We'd start holding hands and running into our neighborhood and walked the youngest ones home first.

We'd all just kinda assumed he was there to pick a kid up but never did.

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626337@reddit

walked the youngest ones home first.

While I regret the circumstances that led to this, it's incredibly heartwarming to read that there was some care given to the younger ones.

Hey, they don’t ask for the knife for showing up. Talk to the people who are giving them the knives for showing up.

The walk there was nice, the afternoon walk home was brutal. I'd meet my kids at school with full camalbaks, hats and sunscreen. Those 2p Wed 118° 1.5 miles walks home...phew.

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spicolie22@reddit

Why, why, why does anyone live in Phoenix? Might as well live inside a pizza oven.

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SarahZona97@reddit

Black ice and heavy snow are why we moved here from the Midwest. The nice fall, winter, and early spring weather is why we stay here. We and a lot of people use our fireplaces in the winter - it gets cold in the desert at night, especially in winter.

That picture is of my wife and I handing out candy out of our temporarily modified van in our neighborhood on Halloween. It was so funny driving through the neighborhood that night and hearing kids scream, "FREE CANDY!!" after seeing the van - as if they couldn't get free candy at every door that night.

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LilJourney@reddit

I'm sure it's a local thing. In my district kindergartners and 1st graders have to be met (and the bus has to drive them to in front of their house). Everyone else is picked up and dropped off at designated corners, no supervision needed.

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50YearsofFailure@reddit

Kindergartners in our town have to be met. 1st grade on, they can just get off the bus. Meanwhile, in 1st grade I was walking almost exactly a mile to school every day. The bus cutoff was 1 mile and that was the next street over, so the kids in the house behind us got to ride the bus and I had to walk.

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hammerofspammer@reddit

Even in first grade I walked home alone from the school bus

Hell, when it crashed into a huge pile of asphalt, several of us started walking the five miles home.

Made it surprisingly far before the driver noticed

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StrangeAssonance@reddit

Elementary I walked 15 mins each day alone since senior kindergarten. When my kid was in sr kinder we had to drop off and pick up. It was a bit of a shock to me.

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HermioneMarch@reddit

Yep. We have to be outside

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clemdane@reddit

That's bonkers

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My HS was about 5 miles away. I had picked up a Schwinn Varsity and rode that on the nice days.

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SocalR32@reddit

I had two transfers and a two mile walk in middle school. It's really hard to empathize with these clowns.

3) We also had a domestic violence incident in the neighborhood. This was when I was able to drive. The police wouldn't let me drive by, BUT I COULD WALK BY THE HOUSE. WTF?!?

I still think it’s weird that kids have to have someone there at the bus stop. I use to have to walk 1/4 mile to my house by myself after the bus dropped me off. My parents were still at work, who was going to be there to pick me up. It taught me independence and helped me for life.

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teriKatty@reddit

My bus stopped literally on the road in front of my house. If my kid takes a bus she has to walk at least 2 blocks

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My mother had no way of knowing what or where I was from 800-1700. Ever. 1973.

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theonlyrealtrw@reddit

Wait, y’all got to take a BUS to and from school!?! 😱

I feel cheated.

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brendini511@reddit

I didn't take a bus until my sophomore year because at that point I was like 3 miles from school. My 2nd elementary school was more than a mile from my house, with no direct route. After registering for school and being given bus information, we weren't allowed to get on the bus after school the first day because at 4th grade I was "too old". (Mom drove us before school that day.) We had no idea at that point how to even get home and my mom couldn't leave work to come get us. Plus they didn't allow students to use the phone ever. The principal ended up giving us a ride and basically gaslighting us about the bus situation. From that day on my mom couldn't stand him.

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zoeybeattheraccoon@reddit

One morning it was freezing cold and the bus was late, so we went to one kid's house near the bus stop, got some firewood and bbq fluid, and made a fire.

The bus finally showed up, we went to class thinking it was no big deal.

An hour later we were all sitting in the Vice Principal's office. He walked in and said, "it smells like a goddamn camp fire in here."

As he was chastising us you could tell that he was on the verge of laughing. I can still see his face.

Am parent of six myself - it was definitely to make sure there were a few spares. Figured a couple would have perished before graduating high school :D

Kangaruex4Ewe@reddit

When I was a teen I got suspended off of the bus for climbing out of the window.

To be fair we were broke down about 2 miles from my house. We’d been there for over an hour. The driver wouldn’t let me off to walk home so I just climbed out of the window and walked home.

Slept like a baby all alone for the rest of the day. 😅

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Prestigious_Stay7162@reddit

Oh yea good idea. I'm sure I wouldn't have to too terribly early to walk the 32 miles to work...

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Prestigious_Stay7162@reddit

Back in my day we walked 32 miles to work and didn't complain

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Material-Ambition-18@reddit

I walk down a dirt road 1/3 of a mile by myself to and from bus stop starting at 7. Only got a ride if it was pouring rain.

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the_annoying_one@reddit

In the 1st and 2nd grade I took public transit from San Francisco to Marin County on my own to go to school. It was a cross county commuter bus so ran on a tight schedule and like 4-5 other students were on the same bus but the school only went to 8th grade so we were almost all still under 10. One teacher met us on the Marin side to drive us the rest of the way.

In the afternoon I took the same bus route home and my 14 year old cousin met me to take me home until my mom got off work. Well, usually met me. More than once I just sat outside a KFC waiting until she got there.

gaining-ex-twink@reddit

This is true. I lived within 2 miles of every school I attended. It was the upper Midwest. -40°F in January, 90 in May/September. You arrived frozen or sweaty.

My millennial brother started demanding rides to school when he was in junior high and the weather was bad. Our parents looked at him like he was insane.

By the time my sister (also millennial) was in high school, our grandpa, who had finally retired, was driving her and her friends to school, the mall, and everywhere else.

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AZWildcatMom@reddit

People in my neighborhood DRIVE THEIR KIDS TO THE BUS STOP, which is within a few blocks of literally everyone. For really young kids, when it’s still dark outside (bus picks them up about 630am), I can understand. But older elementary/middle school? No.

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Blametheorangejuice@reddit

Yep, our house is right near a stop. Every morning when I leave, during the school year, I have to navigate around a half dozen vehicles sitting there. I get it when it is subzero. I don’t when it is nice out and the kid lives less than 50 yards away.

On the other hand, I am equally perturbed by busses when they don’t bunch kids into one stop. I have seen a bus pick up a kid, drive a few houses down, pick up another kid, and so on, all the way down the street. Our bus driver opened up every school year with “you, you, and you, all of you walk to Tony’s house in the morning and I am dropping you off there.”

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AZWildcatMom@reddit

Subzero isn’t even an excuse. I lived in northern MN until I was 9. Walked to school every day. Kids just need proper protection from the cold.

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Snoo-59563@reddit

No such thing as bad weather, kids, just bad clothing! ~ My Parents

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Sad-Chocolate2911@reddit

“In Minnesota, we dress for warmth, not fashion!” My father, every winter morning when I was in Jr. High.

This is why kids get to adulthood and don’t know the first thing about being independent. We haven’t given them the proper foundation.

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LexxenWRX@reddit

I wish the high school kids near me would actually take the bus. The number of parents dropping their kids off is insane to me. Traffic jam by the high school every morning. Seems hardly any teens get their license around here anymore. The parking lot at my old high school is hardly, if ever, more than half full. When I went there we had to pay for a parking pass for the school year, if you didn't get the paperwork in soon enough there was a decent chance you wouldn't get a spot.

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Betacucktard@reddit

I walked to and from school all by myself from the very first day of Grade 1.

It was about a fifteen block walk.

Weather didn't matter. It could be -20 C and I still had to walk there.

The only grace was when the weather was too stormy for the buses to drive safely, because apparently those kids were valuable unlike us city kids.

You can build up a lot of resentment doing all that walking.

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baddeafboy@reddit

😂😂🤣🤣

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jthmniljt@reddit

What’s worse is all these kids that get taken by car to school every day?? That NEVER happened to me unless I overslept!

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WideRight43@reddit

People are nuts. It causes traffic issues too.

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Alycion@reddit

In Baltimore, after primary school, public buses. So I got moved into a specialized middle school at grade 6th. I started school a year early bc of how my birthday falls. I was suppose to walk a few miles, hop on a public bus, and get off in a horrible neighborhood.

You also apply to high schools there. Each had its own focus. GE, trade, college prep, etc. neighborhood schools were where people went bc they were just going to drop out anyway. They were not good schools. They were dangerous. And I shared a bus stop with one. My mom drive me. I sold have of my bus tickets to kids who didn’t receive them bc they didn’t live far enough away to for half fair price and used the other half to wander around the city.

I was in Illinois, but just about the same. I did get hit by a car once on the way to school in the middle of winter. I was wearing my cousin's hand-me-down parka which was too big for me, so I couldn't easily turn my head and look. I stepped out into the crosswalk and was gently bumped by a car that was moving at a crawl. Slid for a ways on the ice-covered street (which was why they were going so slowly), and then the driver took me and her kid the rest of the way to school.

I don't think I even had a bruise! But the principal had to look at my butt to make sure...

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dreaminginteal@reddit

Interesting, Google Maps says it was only 0.6 miles. I remember it as being longer than that, maybe because I was smaller then.

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whereisthequicksand@reddit

Most Gen X visual, thank you

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ArtichokeDifferent10@reddit

Same! I had to look it up on Google maps to be sure, but it was a half-mile walk for me. Walked it every day from kindergarten until 5th grade when we moved to another city. Then rode a bus for about a year and a half until we moved closer to the school and I started walking again. (It was so much closer at only 0.4 miles. 🤣

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Please_Go_Away43@reddit

I walked to elementary school. it was only about 4 blocks distance.

Haha, my kid's school bus broke down when she was 13. She said eff it, I'm not waiting, and walked 2 miles home. No one even said she couldn't leave the school, lol.

This was 5 years ago.

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peaches22298@reddit

We are all feral! Heck I walked back and forth to school alone everyday, until I was 9 and moved to a school system that bussed and still went home to an empty house and watched my sisters until my parents came home. But when my boys (now 23&26) wanted to get off at a neighbor's house and walk through our yards it was almost a freaking production! We had to write letters to the school (neighbor and us) saying it was ok.

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angelus78gak@reddit

When I was a kid I walked home from school by myself

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Outrageous-Advice384@reddit

When I was a kid, I had to take 2 buses and transfer at the high school. By transfers, I mean even as a kindergartener I has to get off the bus and look for the other bus by myself. The busses were different companies and didn’t communicate so sometimes one would leave without me. I’d then wander into the high school for help. If it was in the morning, they’d call me a cab to get to my school but if it was afternoon, my mother had to pick me up. Our bus stop was down the road, not in front of my house, and we made our way. Now the kids are counted and follow a bus patrol to get on and are fully monitored when getting off. I get it but what a different world.

The one that floors me is the 25' long driveway, where the mom is in the car with little Johnny or Janey in the back, waiting on the bus...

Our bus stop was close to 1/4 mile away but it was not in ANY line site to that stop. Like not one of our parents could see if we even made it to the stop.

If you didn’t make it in time you were out of luck because the driver would turn down a road and be gone at that point. They’d even wave at you to let you know you were SOL

I once fell asleep on the bus, got all the way to the end of the route before the bus driver noticed.

My options were a 10 min walk to school or a 45min bus ride.

I walked most days.

Unless it was snowing. Thats when i had to take the only available path. Which was uphill both ways.

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SouxsieBanshee@reddit

I’m glad that parents care about the safety of their children more than our parents did when we were kids

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Afraid_Locksmith8642@reddit

We walked no bus outside of Boston. And guess what? We didnt die. These kids nowadays all scared of everything the parents crazy people imo

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lonelyronin1@reddit

My friend can see her son's bus stop from her front door, but her standing inside her door watching him walk to the bus stop isn't good enough - she has to literally walk him to it. And she must be there when he gets dropped off. The kid is 8.

In many areas the district charges kids to ride the bus.

Despite what people are reporting in these comments, the trend for many years has also been towards consolidating bus stops. If you see a bus stopping over and over at individual houses, it's typically picking up or dropping off kids with special needs.

Districts are also moving from owning their own fleets to utilizing private bus companies, which often means staggered service shared across multiple districts. That results in much longer bus routes. So kids are getting picked up a lot earlier and spending a lot more time on the bus. You may have gotten on the bus at 7:30 a.m. and got into school at 7:45 a.m. It's not unusual for kids today to get on the bus at 6:00 a.m. and get to school at 7:45 a.m.

Many districts have also extended the walk distance to and from school. In my own urban district, the walk distance was extended in 2011 from a half mile to a mile. At the time, I was on the parent council at our school and I advocated for bus service for many of our families who no longer qualified. One 7-year-old child would have been leaving home at 530 am and walking nearly a mile through the city, crossing 4 streets without crosswalks and one street comprised of four traffic lanes, two carriage ways, and two trolley tracks.

The impetus behind these changes is of course budgetary. Due to largely stagnant federal funding and very uneven district funding (usually based on property taxes and allocated through some version of a weighted student formula), even comparatively well-funded suburban public schools are trying to find areas to cut costs.

Unfortunately, cutting costs on buses simply transfers the financial and practical responsibility onto families. There are more cars on the road around school drop off and pick up, which creates congestion as well as increasingly unsafe conditions for kids on bikes or who walked to school.

The inconvenience is also transferred onto caregivers. This is especially difficult for low-income families, single caregivers, and families where both caregivers work and do not have flexible schedules.

Buses are better for the environment. One bus can transport about 72 students. That's 71 fewer vehicles on the roads around the school, twice a day.

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Prestigious_Stay7162@reddit

One more note regarding the "kids should walk long distances in all weather" crowd. It is not unusual for public school kids to lack warm jackets, warm clothes in general, and appropriate footwear. And if they do have that stuff, it needs to last all season because it can't be replaced. The normal wear and tear on kid clothing and outerwear becomes a huge problem when their caregivers can't afford to replace it.

Honestly there really isn't such a thing as too much kindness towards children.

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Prestigious_Stay7162@reddit

I wrote an article about this a couple of years ago. I know way too much about bus transportation.

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Intergalacticdespot@reddit

Our busses dropped us like .9 miles away. Down two streets with no sidewalks. They drop my kids off in front of the house.

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biteyfish98@reddit

For elementary school we weren’t bussed, I walked like 6-8 blocks each way.

For high school, my mother sent me out of district (you could do that by paying an extra “tuition” in those days) and that was too far to walk to / from, so until I could drive, my choices were to walk several blocks to the closest major street to catch the city bus, or walk several more blocks to where the school bus would pick up / drop off. Then I latchkeyed myself inside and did whatever was necessary (homework, chores) or amused myself if I had free time.

Such was life. No one noticed or cared or asked any questions. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Environmental-End691@reddit

Freshman year I had to walk .9miles to school because we lived 1 block too close to my high school to be bale to ise the bus.

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firemanmhc@reddit

I got a bus in elementary school (early 1980s) and there was literally never an adult there to get anybody off the bus. Nobody batted an eye.

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grigiri@reddit

This is the third post I've seen today about kids being unattended.

It's not the same these days as it was when we were young. In most municipalities it is illegal for a child under a certain age, 12 where I live, to be unattended.

Whether or not you agree with it is not important. We can not become our parents, constantly yelling "Back in my day!".

BrogerBramjet@reddit

Two things.

One, I occasionally walked the 2.1 miles home because I could beat the bus home (unless I stopped by Little Green to buy candy). The first adult through the door was 2 hours later. No fires, no injuries requiring medical attention, no police.

Some of these comments are cracking me up.

But in all seriousness, parents didn't wait for the bus back then. Kids walked home, and sometimes that was more than a couple of blocks. No one thought it was weird or dangerous or neglectful. It was just how it was.

I have Gen Z kids so I know that someone has to be there at the bus stop until they get to 5th grade. After that, they can get off the bus themselves.

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karlhungusjr@reddit

my elementary school bus driver carried a literal horsewhip and would threaten to use it if the kids got to loud.

The only time I ever saw a parent at a bus stop was when it was raining. My bus stop was next to a house with a front porch. In crap weather, we were all under the porch roof.

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marshallkrich@reddit

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Jef_Wheaton@reddit

I wasn't allowed to ride the bus until 9th grade. I lived 3 blocks from the elementary school (K-5) and one block under a mile from the middle school. I walked every day, usually alone or with one friend.

Our house was on one hill, and the middle school was on another, so it literally WAS "Uphill both ways."

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OolongGeer@reddit

Who was supposed to meet her son?

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Jonseroo@reddit

This is going to sound like a ridiculous lie but I briefly lived in Pinchbeck in Lincolnshire in the 1980s and the school bus did not stop there.

Queen-Marla@reddit

We were fortunate that our elementary school was right down the street. In 4th-6th grade, we walked without parents. It was Detroit, but we basically were collecting a posse as we went down the street.

AncientHorror3034@reddit

They didn’t even drop us off at our homes, everyone met at the corner and got picked up and dropped off at the corner. That was only for grade school, middle school….we had to use public bus or walk

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MyriVerse2@reddit

I see kids getting dropped off alone every day.

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GlobalTapeHead@reddit

My school bus stop was a total no parents zone. We even hand fights there or the older kids would smoke at the bus stop.

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Commercial_Wind8212@reddit

wE rAn wIlD. such a tired old trope

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Stella-Artwat@reddit

All the (at times literal) hand holding is just weird to me. I work from home and one aspect of the job is to keep your own timesheet (but there are other factors at work in this job that make doing so a little bit convoluted, I won't get into here).

A few days ago some Gen Z-er was blathering about how keeping time is "stressful" and "INSANE" (her caps not mine) and she doesn't know if she can continue with this job, blah blah fucking blah. I wanted to ask her if she'd ever been homeless like I had been once years ago, so she could put her "stress" and fucking "insan[ity]" into perspective.

Anyway, hand-holding creates fragile creatures like the one described above. How does she even wipe her own ass?

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Chestnut-Stoat@reddit

My boomer friend had to walk miles to/from kindergarten daily including in a huge snowstorm. She finally got fed up and just sat down in the snow to wait. She knew that eventually someone would come to find her. (True. School noticed absence and called parent, unlike later sadly with GenX Etan Patz.) And the parent was mad, of course!

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Significant-Deer7464@reddit

Just before school let out, I was behind a school bus and it stopped to pick up 1 kid. I kid you not, that bus turned left into the school parking lot immediately, with a crossing guard. Then they let the kids out.

Used to be if you live in a 3 mile radius, you were walking, and hoping for no rain

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Natural_King2704@reddit

Ous bus stop was ½ mile from our house. You had better be at the bus stop when the bus came, because our bus driver didn't pick you up if you were running to the bus stop, and she didn't wait. If I missed the bus, I had to ride my banana seat huffy 2 miles to school.

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Exulansis22@reddit

When I was a kid we had funding cuts so nobody in the city limits was allowed a bus ride. From kindergarten on I walked 1.5 miles to and from school every day. In Michigan. I don’t think my dad even knew where my school was tbh, and he was married to my mom and lived with us! Regular family, he just had no clue about the workings of our lives.

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bird9066@reddit

The cut off for the bus was literally one street over. That damn bus was half empty.

That's if we had a bus. Elem school we walked a mile each way. We were too close to the school for a bus. In Jr high I would get off the bus and walk up a dirt road to the house. Parents didn't get home for 2-3 more hours

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Use_this_1@reddit

What? My niece got dropped off about 1/2 a block from home in elementary school and she's only 12. My kids did as well but they are mid 20's. The bus stop for our area was our driveway so that was hard to gage, but no one was ever waiting for their kids in our driveway.