The Rainy Walk

This day started like others. Mom getting ready for work. My sister and I getting dressed and eating breakfast before heading out to school.

Mom said we had to lock the door on the way out, because she was leaving for work before we had to get on the bus.

Our bus stop was at the end of our driveway.

We always had to be sure to stand closer to the mail box. There was a line of trees along the front of our yard. The bus driver had already told us she couldn't see us if we stood in line with the trees.

Mom had only been gone about 5 minutes when the rain started. It wasn't bad yet. My sister and I grabbed our rain gear.

As seems the norm with rain storms, it's never awful until you have to step out into it. As we opened the door the sky opened up with buckets showering down. We couldn't see across the street.

It wasn't easy to walk to the end of the driveway with so much water pouring down.

We saw the bus and waited. It didn't slow down. No lights came on.

I wasn't sure how to react.

We watched as it blew past us. We were sprayed with water from the road.

Since the bus didn't stop until 2 houses down, I told my sister we need to start running. I expected someone would see us while they were getting on the bus.

We ran and yelled, but all we could hear was the rain.

The bus moved on.

We couldn't catch up to the bus. It was well out of sight now. My sister said we should go back home. I told her we already were half way to school so we should just keep walking. I also reminded her we locked the door when we left, so we didn't have any place else to go.

The long walk began. My sister kept saying, "you don't know the way" and "we should go back home". I told her I did know the way and we couldn't go home, because the door was locked.

It still kept raining. A lot of cars passed us, but no one stopped. I'm not sure I would've gotten into someone's car anyway. We'd just been learning about "stranger danger" and we didn't know a lot of the neighbors.

We finally made it to school. I didn't understand why the adults were making such a fuss. We were wet, but nothing else was wrong. The adults acted like a ghost just showed up.

We made it to school as lunch was being served, so we got fed. The teachers told us we'd be going home with our Grandma, she was a custodian at the school. It sounded strange, but I was happy to go to my Grandmas house.

My mom told me about this when I asked why everyone was so worried.

Turns out, we walked 1 1/2 miles to school. The worrisome part for the adults was that 1/2 that distance was on a road with no side walk and the posted speed limit was 55mph. We could've been hit by a car at any point on our journey.

Also, we were too young to be walking that far alone. I was in 3rd grade and my sister was in 2nd.

I didn't think I was too little for anything. All I thought was I was big enough to get to school myself. Also, I proved that I knew where I lived and that I could get where I wanted to go without an adults help. I felt on top of the world.

After that day, things changed. The bus stopped everyday. The adults had to flash the porch light if we weren't going to school.

I was disappointed, because walking to school was kind of fun to me.

I'm sure the adults just wanted to be sure nothing happened they had no control over.