My son started fifth grade this year, which added up to all sorts of changes for everyone in the family. One of the biggest changes is that his new school is more than 50 yards away—meaning he’s riding a bus for the first time.

Since we’re still in the contemplation stage of moving, we continue to reside across the street from my parents—a convenience I can’t yet bring myself to think about living without. So Jesse walks over there to have breakfast every morning before getting on the bus one block away. Easy, right?

One would think.

I had prepared Jesse early for the new bus riding experience: when the bus would pick him up, where the bus stop was, which bus to catch on the way home from school, etc. The only detail I failed to track down was the time he would be dropped off in the afternoon. I needed this particular detail on the first day because my grandparents were scheduled to pick him up from the bus stop.

I called down to the school district’s bus garage and talked to Jesse’s bus driver. Because I live in a small town, he knew who I was before I finished saying my first name. After learning what time we could expect Jesse to be dropped off that afternoon, he said, “By the way, did you know that Jesse didn’t get on the bus this morning?”

Like the hysterical mother I am, I immediately began imagining all of the horrible possibilities that may have transpired. Since I hadn’t received a phone call from my parents saying, “Oops, we missed the bus and had to take him to school,” I assumed they had no idea he wasn’t on the bus and that he’d probably been kidnapped from the bus stop and was halfway to Central America by now to be sold into child slavery.

I couldn’t get a hold of my parents to ask them about the situation because they were locked away in a faculty retreat. The bus driver said he would phone the middle school and see whether Jesse was there; he called back just a second later to say that, yes, my son was currently in math class.

After the initial flood of relief, I began to wonder how exactly this had happened. And like a good daughter, I blamed my parents. I was laying bets with myself that Jesse had coaxed them into driving him to school the first day, and they had given in. Grandparents have a tendency to do that. Or, he had indeed missed the bus, but they hadn’t called to tell me, letting me hear it from the bus guy instead.

At 4 p.m., I called my grandparents’ house and asked Jesse about his day. After a little chitchat about teachers and classes, I got down to what I really wanted to know: “What happened at the bus stop?” I asked. “Why didn’t you ride the bus?”

“I lined up with the other kids,” he replied.

Really confused now, I questioned, “So they got on the bus and you didn’t?”

Now he was confused. “No, I got on the bus,” he replied.

“Why did you get off the bus, then? Did you not want to go to school?”

Moving past confusion and into 10-year-old exasperation, he said, “I got on the bus. I rode the bus to school. I don’t know how else to say it.”

“So you’re saying you rode the bus to school?” I asked, still muddled.

“YES!”

Apparently, the bus driver didn’t know my son as well as he thought he did. And I apologized later to my parents for thinking evil thoughts all day. They nodded absently, still not sure what the fuss had been about. “We put him on the bus,” they kept saying. I know. Jesse had indeed ridden the bus to school. However, he rode the wrong bus home from school, delaying him 20 minutes, and causing my grandparents to think he had been kidnapped and was halfway to Central America to be sold into child slavery.

Just when you think you know what you’re supposed to be worrying about… TPW