For some reason, I'm remembering a contest we used to have at the bus stop. I grew up in a small hamlet with about 30 houses, four miles south of a city of 20,000; and the school bus would stop in the center and pick up all 15 to 20 school age kids that lived there at the same time. While we were waiting for the bus, we would do the same things kids do everywhere: race each other (3 of 12 was fastest) and act like idiots. Then the bus would get there, and we would all line up and get on.

For some reason, being the first person in that line became a sort of status symbol. That person could get on and see all the way to the back of the bus, and everyone could see him (usually) as he walked down the middle aisle. Everyone else who got on saw his back.

So when I was little, it was a "might makes right" thing. The biggest kid got on first. But then later, it changed so that the first person who got to the bus stop was the first person who got on the bus. So then everyone would try to get there early. We would show up half an hour early just to be the first person who got on the bus.

Then that changed too because people would show up and leave. To prove that they had gotten there early, they would put a mark on the side of the road. And people were getting up at 5:30 and going and making their mark, just so that they could be the first person on the bus. For a while it was this guy named Steve. Steve was very cool, and was sort of the leader of the hamlet kids. Steve would get up at 5:00. I know because I was out there at 5:30 once and his mark was already there.

I don't know when the mark thing stopped being important. Maybe it was when people got so used to Steve being first that they stopped bothering.

Anyway, we always lived in the same place, so for 13 years - K through 12, fall through spring - same bus stop. Kind of figured it deserved a mention, and the "first on thing" just surfaced in my head this weekend for some reason.

(The only other thing about the bus stop was the legend of Ricky the fart holder. Ricky who was six or seven years older than me, and I was told that he could hold his farts, and he would hold them till he was right in front of the bus driver. Ricky was a very fun guy. I think he ended up a school teacher.)