By Ken Hamilton Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Thu Nov 10, 2011, 09:09 PM EST
NIAGARA FALLS — As we pulled up to the corner of South Avenue and 18th Street, my aunt continued her conversation with me; but it was one of the few times in my life that I paid her little attention.
I was totally fascinated by what I saw going-on on the other side of the stop sign.
Do you know what an epiphany is? It is the sudden realization or understanding of the greater meaning of something. It is a shorter version of the phrase, “Oh! I get it.
Well, I think that “I finally got it,” both yesterday when I was coming down Porter Road on the way from taking my aunt to the doctor and on to the Community Pharmacy on Michigan, and when I stopped at that stop sign on South. Two things happened, but first the second thing.
As I stopped on the corner, a school bus rolled up with its red lights flashing and it began to discharge what looked to be high school students. As they poured out of the bus — by my observation — few of them even looked for traffic as they make their way onto the streets and into their various directions toward home.
One kid gave me the eyeball as he glared through my windshield, but the others just crossed under the protective red glow of the bus’ flashing lights. My aunt continued speaking into my nearly closed ear, whatever it was that she was saying; but my eyes were as large as the stop sign that protruded from the side of that bus.
When the teens had safely crossed, the bus driver turned off his red lights and slid in front of me to make a left-hand turn and to finish his route.
I then interrupted my aunt and said, “I finally figured out why these kids walk in the streets instead of on the sidewalk.” She asked me why.
In the past, I thought that it was because we had given kids nearly everything that it was that we didn’t have when we were growing up without giving them the important things that we did have, so much so that they began to think that we owed them the rights without the responsibilities. That included the right to walk in the street.
In fact, at Ted’s Hot Dogs on the Boulevard last Tuesday, I heard this suburban college girl gleefully chatting up her boyfriend about how her mother had finally conceded to pay for her airplane ticket so that she could go on spring break next year. Her boyfriend said, “Well, she was supposed to; she’s your mother.”
Notwithstanding that in New York state, with its lucrative benefits for not working, school breakfasts and lunches and such, the epiphany that I had was that school buses was the reason why these kids walked in the streets.
Since they were in the earliest of grades, by taking a yellow bus to school, they learned that any time that they are in the street, traffic will always stop for them, why would they think any differently even when there is no school bus?
You know, they have proven themselves right over and over again — because traffic does stop for them when there are no flashing red school bus lights.
The other thing is that I watched the kids from the Niagara Falls High School who were not bused that day walking down Porter Road on their way home. I saw only one kid in the street and he was a part of an integrated cluster of about 15 students — black girls, white girls, black boys and white boys, all peacefully making their way home on the sidewalks.
I must say that I have been extremely proud of the orderliness of the kids who walk back and forth from that school. My initial fear was that they would trash the golf course, but to my knowledge nothing like that has happened. The irony of it was that the single kid who was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, was one of the white boys — and he was passing a basketball back and forth to his buddy, another white boy.
Why would I mention that?
Because it reminded me of when I drive down the sidewalk-less suburban and rural roads, where the students are all bused to school. In the summer, those kids nearly always walk in the streets, too. Notwithstanding the fact that they have no sidewalks!
Aha. I'll be going to Oslo next year to pick up my Nobel Prize because — I am a epiphical genius. It is the school bus that causes kids to walk in the street!
Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. Contact him at kenhamilton930@aol.com.
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