Orange Hoodie

It’s the first day of school today here in DC (as well as many other places, of course). There’s an early baseball game today, which means parking is problematic, so I decided to take the bus to work. Students all over the place, some in obvious school uniforms and some not. Soon the junior high and high school students will give off an air of the mundanity of traveling to and from school (like the adults traveling to and from work already have), but since it’s the first day, none of them yet have that attitude, and it’s nice. They seem excited and unsure, and it makes them so much less obnoxious.

On my first bus is a boy about 6 years old and his mother, heading off to school. He’s bouncy and clearly excited. A couple blocks away from the school, his mother points out that their stop is next and “look there’s your school,” and the boy stands to see out the windows and gets a huge grin on his face. His mother asks him if he’s excited for the first day and he sort of falls back into seat and giggles and says he’s VERY excited.

I get off at the same stop they do to transfer to another bus. There’s parents and little kids all over the place heading to the school. Ah, the sweetness of the first day of school.