When I was a young girl (about 10 or 11), I had an incredibly long bus ride. It was about an hour and a half ride in the morning and in the afternoon. Now we only lived about 9 or 10 miles from the school, but we had to meander through all the back woods roads. In those days I guess they figured it was a lot cheaper to hire fewer bus drivers and let the kids suffer a little.(Maybe that's what is wrong these days...that's a topic for another post!)
Actually, the long bus rides (at least in elementary school) are some of my happier school days memories. I had a wonderful friend to share the rides with, and we just laughed and had the best time every day. One of our amusements(we must have had a very tolerant bus driver) was to use our lunch boxes as drums and sing along with the beat. One of the best songs in our large repertoire was "My Favorite Things," from The Sound Of Music. We sang and played it, taking turns being the singer and drummer.
Flash forward almost thirty years(yikes!!!!). Today on the way to our once-a-week home school co-op, we were in our little "school bus"- actually our fifteen passenger van. Emily was playing music in the back. She piped up, "Mom, Here's a song you like..." "I can't hear it," I said "What is it?" Boy was I surprised when Emily turned it up and it was "My Favorite Things."
I first thought of my time on the bus, and then I remembered another hilarious episode with the same song. My older sister and I were driving with my mother to the pool in our old 60's Comet. A real classic of a car, but I was mortified to drive around in it. We inherited it from my grandfather. Kids would think it's really "cool" these days! The three of us were singing "My Favorite Things" when we pulled into the pool parking lot.
We got to the part of the song where it says, "Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudel..." I don't know why, (because Mom, you really do have a nice voice), but my mother was suddenly singing in this nasally, weird pitch. She wasn't trying to be funny, though, and my sister and I jut stopped singing and looked at each other. We just died laughing. I mean we laughed so hard, we were on the floor of the car. And I think we were both teenagers, or near teens at the time. It is a good memory.Thanks for singing with us in the car, Mom!
