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Where the World Began: A Reflection
A little girl’s first steps into a faded, olive-green world
When I was little, yellow school buses simply didn’t exist. I’d only ever seen them on TV, full of laughing children who somehow seemed excited about the idea of going to school, and everyone knew the things you saw on TV were just make-believe.
The bus that arrived to pick me up on my very first day as a little student was olive green.
Like everything on the military base where my family and I lived, it was the drab, sober color of my father’s fatigues. The color of creeping lichen on unfriendly trees — always a sure sign you were straying too far from home. The color of the musty mildew that sometimes grew in the basement when it got damp.
My mother had insisted school was supposed to be fun — something I should be excited for — but I knew better. I knew only too well that school was part of the World, and that the bus was the alien chariot that would take me there against my wishes and better judgment.
From what I could tell, other kids were curious about the World, and they loved to talk about all the things they would one day do, be, and become out there. But I felt differently. I saw the World for what it surely was — something huge, limitless even, and terrifying. Something…
