Where they’re going. Where they’ve been.  I’ve worn lots of shoes.  I bet if I think about it real hard I could remember my first pair of shoes…   – FORREST GUMP

The preceding quote comes to mind because Disney, our youngest-for-now, got her first pair of shoes yesterday!  She loves them!  She always asks to wear them, even if it’s just for around the house.  But she always ends up just wearing one somehow and losing the other, so I wonder what Forrest Gump would think of that?  At first when she got them on, she just stood there, as if locked in cement.  Her big sister Taylor helped her learn to walk in them – it was adorable.  She was so patient with her without doing too much for her and giving in by picking her up.  Finally, Disney learned to walk in her new shoes and loves them.  Pretty soon she’ll be running around in her new shoes with me waddling behind her trying to keep up!

Seeing her “stuck” there when she thought she couldn’t walk reminded me of my other daughter Samantha, who is now almost 4.  When Sammie was learning to walk, it was summertime, and she was wearing sandals, so she’d be walking, walking, then as soon as she hit the grass – STOP!  And she’d be stuck there too, just like Disney was in her new shoes.  It’s strange how learning to walk is such a huge new experience, yet I’ve never met anyone who remembers going through it…  I think it’s much more fun being on the parent side, this time around, but then again, I can’t really name an experience that isn’t!

The last job I would ever even consider having is a school bus driver. Not only do you have to put up with crabby, rowdy children for up to two hours a day while trying to get them safely to and from school, you have to put up with their guardians. My mother drives a school bus. She is up at 6am ever morning. She drives a morning route, a kindergarten route, and the afternoon route. Last Tueday NIGHT, the grandmother of one of these tykes visited our humble abode. It seems that her car was totally ruined and completely undrivable after my mother backed into it with a bus that morning. The woman stated that she was outside in the yard at the time of the incident. Yet she did not attempt to stop the bus or call the school or police after she watched the bus damage her vehicle. Not only that, but who would wait until 9 o’ clock that night to do anything about it. Plus, if the car was damaged as badly as it was claimed to be would the bus driver or kids not have noticed hitting it?

The next day the sheriff’s department came to the house to investigate. Apparently, the victim’s automobile was not nearly as damaged as everyone was lead to believe. To make matters seem funnier or more ironic, the woman is the mother of the rather plump boy who broke my sister’s arm in phys ed nearly 20 years ago when he sat on it while playing scooterboard hockey. It does not take a genius to realize that you should report an accident immediately after it happens and not 14 hours later.