Holly's Notes and Condition

Back-to-School: Cell phones, Backpacks, Scooters and Buses

We live near an elementary school and to leave our neighborhood, sometimes is a little daunting with distracted, hectic parents trying to drop kids off and then head off, by pulling illegal U turns at the 'T' intersection leading out of our tract. ('U' turns are legal there, but many of them make what I call 'C' turns, looping into the tract enough to intersect with traffic coming down out of the neighborhood.) At least, the City stopped allowing parking on the opposite side of the street from the school, that had parents and little kids playing 'dodge the speeding cars', while trying to cross 4 lanes of traffic, just to save walking down to the corner and waiting for the traffic light and crossing guards, to cross the street leading to the school. Today, inadvertently, I timed a run to donate some household items to Goodwill, just in time for the Jr High kids to be getting out of school. What a difference - a lot of kids talking on cell phones, pulling rolling 'backpack' luggage for their school books or riding on razor scooters, with a couple of kids riding motorized scooters - which with the hills around us, you'd need a motor to get you up the hill. Not a lot of bicycles, but a lot more razor scooters around here.
Anyway, I ended up following a school bus toward the Goodwill donation center, and with my view completely filled with a big yellow school bus, I missed my turn, and ended up following the school bus some more. I was patient, I wasn't in a hurry. The school bus pulled up to a stop and I read on the back of the bus, "Stop when red lights are flashing" - OK, I was stopped, but then there were no flashing 'red lights', so I slowly started to go past the bus, when the handy dandy 'Stop' sign popped out and the red lights started to flash. I pulled really slowly up to the intersection and stopped and who should be coming the other way, but a sheriff's patrol car. The officer turned left towards me and yelled 'Hey' - he was in full attack mode. I rolled down my window and he unleashed with "Why didn't you stop, didn't you see the red flashing lights?" I said that when I started to pass there were no red flashing lights and that the sign only came out after I had passed. He throttled back a bit, his tone now set on 'stun' - "Well OK, but you probably should stop anyway." I replied with, "Understood" and nodded that in fact, I understood. He told me to 'Have a nice day' and I made my left turn and proceeded to have a nice day - away from him and away from 'undecided' school buses. I doubled back, to the donation center for Goodwill, unloaded the car trunk full of household items, got my donation receipt and drove home, uneventfully. Uneventfully, that is until I came over the hill, slowing, preparing to turn right on the counter-banked street into our neighborhood, when right in front of me, a car tried to turn a U turn, only misjudged the turn and had to stop and put the car in reverse - picture more of a cursive 'r' turn, in reverse. Luckily, no one was rushing up over the hill, behind me and I could just stop and wait for them to get out of the way - yeah, it's 'back to school' time. Its all part of the educational process.

posted by Holly @ 5:28 PM