November 13, 2019:
Somehow I missed my bus home from school.
That happened exactly once, in the three years I attended the gifted program at Martha Farnham Elementary, on Cass Street in Pacific Beach. Usually I couldn't wait to get my skinny ass out of there.
I made an unusual decision. Instead of waiting for another bus, I chose to walk home, about five miles including a very hefty hill for a fourth grader. In fact I took a somewhat long way around, up Clairemont Drive, when the steeper but far shorter hill at Baker Street would have made better sense.
Why did these decisions seem appropriate?
I think, at least in part, to get my skinny ass out of there. Waiting near that school an extra 30 minutes would have been torturous.
Also, perhaps, confusion. Certainly, martyrdom. Where missing the bus compounded my sense of defeat over being at that school, that day-after-day trauma, so that walking home was a passion that seemed reasonable.
Of all people, who pulled over in a T-Bird on Clairemont Drive offering a ride the last mile home? My father, who lived at the time on Ecochee Avenue, only a mile-and-a-half from my home, but who I saw just once or twice a year. I turned him down. More martyrdom, perhaps, but he made me uncomfortable.