Kids

My bus ride into work is usually invaded with kids going to school. But the bus ride home, closer to 5:00, rarely has any school-age kids on board.

Today for some weird reason though, three young students board my evening bus at one stop near a school. Two boys, one girl - wholly unremarkable, they exude the standard expression of teenager-self-discovery-through-nonconformity that is nearly universal in its application: baggy sweatshirts, saggy bookbags hanging off one shoulder (somebody should really tell them that messes up their backs), and faces that look like they are suspended in that magical place between sleep, boredom, and calculus.

These three all head for the back of the bus by instinct, which (if the patches of graffiti are any indicator) is where all the bad kids ride. But they don't talk to each other, and none of them make any effort to sit beside another one. So they are obviously not friends, and have only been drawn together into this common time and place by the aggregating funnel of the bus stop.

I wonder what it is that caused these three to be at school together so long after the school day ended... and then I remember detention. Do they still do that nowadays?

There's his stop.

The girl is holding an opened orange jumbo freezie. Looking more closely, I now see that she's wearing athletic shorts, and her long brown hair has been pulled into a quick ponytail. So perhaps she wasn't in detention, but was out kicking around a soccer ball and is now hydrating.

There's her stop.

There's his stop.