Going to School by Tractor

At five, I was frightened of the school bus. I don’t know why.

My mother even watched me duck down behind a large log in the field we kids would cross, hiding from the yellow thing. Yes, I got a butt-whipping for that, but it didn’t stop me from being afraid or hiding again.

This time, Pa Sanders was working in his field and saw what I’d done. He was digging up the earth for planting.

He dropped the tines or perhaps the discs from the tractor and drove straight for me. I thought I had another licking coming, but instead, he had me get on the green and yellow John Deere and drove me to school.

On the way, he talked about how he never rode a school and how he and his sister walked to school. The two following days, he escorted me to the bus stop and saw that I got on.

The third day, he met me in the field near the log that I had hidden behind and told me that he’d watch me get on the bus. I did.

The following day, I got on the bus without any problem and never hid, needed escorting, or watched again. This doesn’t mean my anxiety about riding the school bus went away.

It means I was taught how to deal with it.

Last Friday, I saw a man with three children on his red Kabota, turning first into the middle school where two of the children got off, and then he crossed the roadway to the high school, where the last child got down. The sight left me beaming with a smile from ear to ear.