What was your school commute like?

Tonight after picking up some videos at Hollywood Video for our Friday night viewing, and discussing horror pictures, Beth was wondering aloud about what it was with people about graveyards / cemetaries... Marie commented that her commute in the morning to kindergarten and part of first grade was through the church graveyard upon leaving the parsonage. She often made the trip alone. Wow!

My kindergarten and first grade classes were at Golden Oaks Elementary in North Kansas City. The school is now closed. The school grounds abutted our back yard, but I had to walk several houses-worth up the block to an asphalted walkway which ran up the hill to the school.

We moved to Batesville, Arkansas, half-way through third grade. We lived about four blocks from Central Elementary. The walk included cutting across the block from the old grounds of Arkansas College -- a pretty neat old campus, with huge oaks and large lawns (at least to a nine year-old).

After the first day of school at Central, I was queried by an 8th grader wearing a white belt-stap rig across one shoulder(we had up to 8th grade at the site) as to what my name was and who was my teacher. I surrendered up the information, thinking it strange. The next day I arrived for class, and to my horror, found my name written on the chalkboard and the word "jaywalking" beside it. My teacher told me I'd have to stay 20 minutes after class. I was reduced to tears; I honestly thought I had done nothing wrong. I never had heard of jaywalking. Once I told the teacher that I hadn't a clue as to what it was, she asked about my previous school's location, and put two-and-two together. Having never had to cross a street to get to school, I now had several to cross. I paid my debt to society, and didn't get crosswise with the law until I got a speeding ticket at 20.