Denver Parenting Examiner

Uneasy Rider

I have evil car juju. I don't know what it is; maybe in a past life I was some kind of vehicularly-inclined homicidal maniac. Or maybe it's just the counterpart to the idea of the cobbler's children never having shoes: the mechanic's daughter will never have a running car. Whatever, I frequently find myself with broken vehicles, and as a result I am well aquainted with the bus system.

The city bus was a revelation to me when I first moved here. I grew up in Nowhere, New Mexico, where we all got our learner's permit at fourteen and our real license at fifteen because there were miles and miles between anywhere you happened to be and anywhere you might want to go. You had to have a car to have any kind of social life, to say nothing of a job. Driving was a way of life. It might be unpleasant (the frequency of deer/auto contact alone was enough to suck the fun out of being behind the wheel for even the most giddy teen driver) and tedious, but that's how it was.

So when I first got here and was taking the RTD to and from school, it was the most awesome thing ever. The idea that I could walk a couple of blocks in the fresh air and then sit and read while someone else negotiated Colfax was bliss. I was all about the bus, to the extent that when we moved to a new house we selected one on a direct bus line to the kids' school with the idea that we could take the bus more and drive less.

The folly of my thinking became clear soon enough.

I mean, the kids love taking the bus. And I don't blame them -- walking a little first thing in the morning, even in the worst weather, is much nicer than piling into a car. And the bus itself is somehow very soothing; the big kids can sit quietly and listen to their music (or do last minute homework) while the littlest can pick out new words on signs and pull the cord to signal a stop. They can spread out so that they don't have cause to bicker. Plus, they don't have to listen to what is an almost daily lecture on the subject of four way stops and why those of us with a driver's license ought to figure out how they work. (In my defense, people really should know that. The rules are not that hard.)

The problem is, just like with, say, puppies, the pleasure of the experience is just not equal to the lack of practicality. My conscience might feel better about the down-sizing of my environmental footprint, but my bank account is not improved by being down-sized to the tune of fifteen dollars each day. And while I enjoy the theory of taking my kids out for a walk, the reality of it reminds me of a parenting writer (whose name I unfortunately can't remember) who wrote in the mid-nineties that children don't walk so much as "oscillate randomly." While I'm trying to hustle them along so we don't miss our bus, they are futzing with their MP3 players (the oldest); trying to identify a new species of beetle (the middle); or clinging tightly to my hand and stutter-stepping in order to try to match our strides (the smallest). Even my young house guest, who has at least an inch on me, and presumably longer legs, idles along at pace more usually associated with the shelled members of the animal kingdom.

Not to mention, taking the bus everywhere turns out to be a full-time occupation. Considering that several lines only run once an hour, on the days that I have to make three trips to the school I literally only have about ninety minutes total at the house; the rest of the time time I am sprinting to the bus, or waiting around for school to let out because the only bus got me there forty-five minutes early, or walking a couple of miles at a kindergardener's speed because we missed our bus and had to take another.

At the same time, the kindergardener in question considered the whole situation to be a mommy-and-daughter day, because it was just the two of us, and I had nothing to do but talk to her as we walked along. She told me about her day, and practiced skipping, and saw the first dragonfly of the year, and finally fell asleep against my shoulder when I piggy-backed her the last few blocks.

I'm heading into my second week of carlessness, and the charm of being able to use gold dollar coins is wearing a little thin. On the other hand, the older kids are learning to take the bus by themselves to spare me one trip, and I like that they are learning self-sufficiency. And this whole thing ought to encourage us to get our bikes out of winter storage and start using them more. Still, I look forward to the day that the bus becomes a fun option, and not a necessity, once again.

After all, you can only listen to someone yelling randomly about Armageddon and the promise of hell so many times before you start to long for the tranquility of your own car. Even if it means you have to do the driving yourself.
Topics: Lakewood , transportation

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