Have you ever made a fickle decision, accidentally damaged an object, misinterpreted something unknowingly, or even deliberately disobeyed someone, leading to an unpleasant misadventure? Now think to yourself what little mistake have you made that transformed into a large incident? For me that incident was the time I decided to stay on the bus when no one answered the door when I was in third grade.

It all started when I was energetically dashing out of the school, like a squirrel running away when seeing a human walk by. Upon approaching the bus staircase, I slowed down gradually, like when an instrument slowly gets silenced upon seeing a decrescendo symbol.  As soon as I got on the bus I noticed three things. One was the array of students shouting at their friends as loud as Hyenas, which definitely made the bus driver feel unpleasant. The second was the bus driver, who was austere from all the anxious amount of time he spent driving a humongous bus in complete mayhem.  And the third and final was the signature smell of the bus, which is so disgusting that you’re better off not knowing where the smell comes from, or else you will feel nauseated. Walking through the bus aisle, I sat down in an empty seat. The bus had a loud cantankerous moan from the diesel motor as it departed from the others, leaving the school now to be left alone. The bus was now off on the road about to reach my destination, my neighborhood.

As soon as the bus entered my neighborhood I could see my house getting closer to me by the second; it looked as if it was increasing in size. The bus immediately stopped. I was quickly alarmed, as if lightning had struck. I casually walked up to the smooth driveway. My mom had informed me that my grandmother would be at the house that day, so I didn’t have a slight bit of concern that she would not answer. My grandmother, or who I, my siblings, and my cousins call Mema (a slang word for grandma), had very light blond hair and was in her early sixties. She was charismatic, kind, and outstandingly caring. Once I had got to the front, I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell, hearing the melodic, tuneful, and pleasant sound it makes. But in contrast to what I was expecting, no one answered.

I was extremely confused. The door wasn’t even ajar. I remembered there was a hidden key, so I could get in from the house through the garage door. But as soon as the idea popped into my head, a honking noise was coming from the bus. The feeling of apprehension was everywhere in my head, like a bunch of bees swarming around a hive. I had to make a decision, stay home alone without my parents’ permission or go back on the bus. I told the bus driver that nobody had answered the door.

“You should double-check to make sure,” the bus driver responded. “If your parents didn’t say anything about you being home alone, and there’s no way you can get inside your house.”

I could have told the bus driver I could get inside since there was a key in the garage I could use to unlock, but there were other kids my age, older, and younger that were waiting to go home. So I just resorted to knocking on the door once more, impatiently waiting to see if there was a response or not. After no one had answered I sped up when jogging towards the bus and quickly responded to the surprisingly patient bus driver.

Before I knew it, I was back in the bus seat. The bus driver had told me that we would come back after dropping all the students off and see if anyone was at the door then. Time passed like a long train. Everytime another student got off the bus, it felt as if the gap between them and the next student getting off would keep on getting shorter, and shorter. Once every student was gone, the bus itself felt lonely and silent compared to when everyone else was on the bus.

We went immediately to the house soon after. I quickly ran to both doors. Then I knocked on both doors. As no one answered, the same collection of thoughts from when this problem first occurred had circled through my head like a car driving on a roundabout. I got back on the bus, thinking to myself about the consequences that would happen if I had stayed home. My mind felt like a foggy day, thinking about it.

I decided to go on the bus again. As I got back on the bus, it felt incredibly weird seeing it so empty in the seats where the students had sat. The empty seats made me think about the time passing.

“We’re going to have to take you back to the school because they can have someone pick you up there in the school office,” the bus driver explained. “Most likely someone will pick you up.”

I was now seated, resting head-first on my backpack. I had tried to go back on the bus, thinking that the door would have been answered the second time, but ended up deducting time for the rueful mistakes I made. As the bus drove carefully, at a moderate speed, it approached the front of the school in a non-abrupt way.

In the next minute and a half, I was now seated in the main office. The room was filled with staff workers who were working constantly. One of the staff had informed me they were going to contact my family. She had blondish hair, a normal height, and was wearing a regular black sweater. I told her about my grandmother, and how she didn’t answer the door, which implied that she wasn’t at the house. She asked for her phone number, but I had no idea what it was. I felt careless and uneasy at the same time.

“Don’t worry, we will contact your parents, and either they will contact your grandmother or give us your grandmother’s number,” the staff worker said hopefully.

Minutes passed.

“I’m here to pick up Evan Schleicher,” she announced.

            “Yep, we know,” The female staff worker recalled. “We’ve had him here, in the main office ever since he got off the bus.”

“Thanks for keeping him here,” my grandmother responded. “Also, the reason why he couldn’t get inside the house is that he didn’t use the doorbell, and I couldn’t hear him knock on the door since I was vacuuming upstairs.”

“Oh, Evan. I forgot to say hi to you.” She apologized. “But you should use the doorbell, or use that key in that spot to open the door.”
          “Okay, Mema,” I replied.

“The car is parked right over there,” she told me.

I soon got into the back seat of the car, and we soon drove off.  I knew I should have thought more about the outcome. Then I wouldn’t have wasted my grandmother's time. I mean this could have all been avoided if I just took the key and unlocked the door.

I frequently got the feeling of being pitiful from my mistakes, but I definitely learned an extremely valuable lesson that day. I learned that you can essentially write your life as if it were a book; your decisions can make the outcome, and if you think about the outcome of your choices, then you can write yourself a good life.

 

 

 

 

-Evan S.