Making Assumptions Can Have Some Chilling Results

When I was in high school, my family moved from a suburban area to a very rural one. Instead of having a school bus stop right in front of our house, it was now at the end of our quarter-mile driveway. We were the first stop, and the second was another quarter-mile or so down the dead-end road.

On the first really cold day with ice and snow on the ground, my two brothers and I trudged out to the bus stop. The road was unplowed, but several vehicles had been over the inch or so of snow and ice. So, we waited. And waited. Etc. 

About a half-hour after our pickup time, we trudged back to the house and told Mom. She got dressed, got our youngest brother and us into the station wagon, and drove us the mile and a half to school. While we checked in and went off to class, she complained about the missing bus before driving our youngest brother to his school. 

It turned out that since the kids at the next stop were known to not bother with school on really cold or foul days, the driver had a habit of skipping our road on those days so she didn’t have to drive almost a mile on a one-lane road and execute a turnaround at the top of their farm road.

I guess she thought we were of the same mindset. If so, she guessed wrong.