Zen Monday: #141

It's Zen Monday, the day you experience the photo and share in the comments what you've learned.

Is this your first Zen Monday? Tell us what comes to mind--what the photo makes you think of or how it makes you feel. There's no right or wrong, no secret, no prize. Just have fun.

Email me if you want the phone number to inquire about buying this bus. I'm happy to be helpful to the seller, just don't want to invade privacy.

Free Time

Bus lot behind John Muir High School

In the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD), school starts September 14th. For the sake of the school kids, I hope it feels like a long way off. School's a great thing, but summer is, too, and kids need that block of time for disorganized activities, being lazy and having nothing to do.

It's no secret children are over-booked and over-stressed these days. My neighbors were talking yesterday about seeing eight-year-old girls in make-up and sexy outfits at summer school. Why, when I was a kid, we never...

Hmm.

Whose parents do I sound like?

Yeah. When I was a kid I swore I'd never say some of the things my parents said. But I'm right.

Change is inevitable. But I'm sorry kids have to be so organized, so supervised, so scheduled even in summertime. I wonder if my parents were sorry I had to spend my summers riding my horse to the candy shop and building forts in the forest and swinging from the rope that dangled from the willow tree over the river bend.

Memory Bus

click on the photo to enlarge it

John, Boz and I were walking in the neighborhood the other day when I noticed these flowers behind a fence. I began to photograph them when I saw a school bus parked ahead. The sidewalk led my eye like a fast lane through a tunnel of memory.

I didn't always ride the bus to school. My mother was a teacher in my grade school and junior high. Needless to say, I had a regular ride. In high school, I usually carpooled with friends or walked when it was warm enough. On winter days, if the carpool wasn't available, I rode the bus. It picked me up at the stop sign at the end of our street, the last street in town before the cornfields.

It wasn't exactly toasty on the bus in northern Illinois in 1970, and those were the days before seat belt laws. I remember sliding from side to side on the cold seat on the way to school and just being glad I didn't have to walk all the way there in the snow.

Here in sunny, southern California all that is behind me. My friends are going through final exams, school plays, proms and graduations with their kids. Everything's different. Then again, nothing's changed.

Despite the bright yellow flowers and a sunny afternoon on the way, that school bus looks exactly like the one that used to pick me up at the end of our street on snowy, winter days.