The bus for the Boy’s school collects up it’s passengers right across the street, basically in the neighbor’s driveway.

Try this on for a little light morning entertainment: the neighbors left their sprinkler timer on, and the damn things ran sometime during the night. Said sprinklers are not calibrated very well at all. This means:

• The entire driveway is iced over.
• The sidewalk in front of the house is a solid sheet twenty feet long.
• Kids are idiots about ice.

Well, okay, that last one didn’t have anything to do with the sprinklers, but it’s still true.

First kid to get to the ice responds with joy, and immediately starts sliding up and down the sidewalk. When this looses it’s sheen, he switches to doing it backwards.

Backwards. Did anyone else immediately think ‘tailbone’?

Justin tried to make fun of him from inside the house (I can watch this whole thing from the office), until I pointed out that at least that kid was wearing a coat. (Justin has decided he doesn’t like coats, so we are letting him learn the hard way — I did balk at letting him go out with no coat AND soaking wet hair, however.)

It didn’t take long for that kid to start hitting the pavement, which, while certainly entertaining, could be beaten out by other wackiness.

Cue the arrival of more kids. Make sure these kids are wearing big ass backpacks and carrying musical intruments. Make sure they can’t see where the ice starts, because it’s in the shadow of the neighbor’s house.

Wacky.

Right. Now roll in the bus. Make SURE the bus pulls up RIGHT alongside the iced over sidewalk, so all the kids have to head back into the icepatch to get on. Unbalanced, overloaded kids rising up on one foot to get into the bus: now that’s comedy.

While you’re at it, have one kid (with no coat, wet hair, and wearing SHORTS) come barreling down the sidewalk because he’s late for the bus (this kid is always late, and I have no idea why — his sister is always early), and hit that ice at a run. HE was carrying a trombone — very nice.

Now, the bus is loaded, and the Mom who lives in that house is out in the driveway (keeping her balance), sort of trying not to laugh and looking like she feels bad about the ice. She is waving to the bus.

Right then, send her 4 year old running out of the house in his pajamas so he can wave to his older sibs. Have him wipe out, slide across the driveway, plow into Mom, and take her out, too. Not so funny now, is it, Mom?

I might never get all these tears out of my eyes.