Close to Home by John McPherson for May 02, 2010

Certainly wears those shoes out fast…

Meet the Flintstones

A run-a-way BUS.

In the UK, they’re called ‘walking buses’. But we dispense with the shell etc. Seriously.

I walked to school. We made fun of the poor suckers from the country who had to be bused in.

This is also how the school district is cutting costs – no engines to maintain, no gas to buy. And it dispenses with the need to pay gym teachers.

Walking allows kids to talk about about class (“Hate it!”), talk about girls (They’re ucky, but let me tell you what I’m going to do with one when I get up the nerve to speak to one.”), and throw rocks at each other. Somehow it always took us the full hour to walk two miles, but hey, we were kids.

Many times, on nice days, a group of us kids actually CHOSE to walk the two or three miles home from school…it was fun! The bus driver would stop the bus, ask us if we wanted to ride, and we’d say no,we’d rather walk.

Ahh, the good old days!

We have a walking school bus in my town, in the USA. Parents walk with kids, and the kids hold hands at the intersections.

So that’s what Bedrock looks like nowadays.

And 50 years from now the trip will have been up hill, both ways.

Now they need to work on bus driver obesity.

shogun124 - I thought it was:

“Uphill! Both ways! Barefoot! In the snow! Against gale-force winds! Carrying 497 metric tons of books!…”

This strip is a lot funnier if you try to think of the sound effects as well.