In high school (and in middle school, for that matter), my school bus arrived promptly at seven AM, or six fifty eight, six forty five, six thirty, or whenever the hell it felt like it between six thirty and seven. The district's policy was that the bus would wait until the time it was supposed to arrive, and then wait for five minutes. The bus drivers' policies never seemed to add up with this.
My brother and I never managed to get enough sleep, since we'd go to bed routinely after midnight. Getting up before six thirty was horrific, besides, if the bus came at seven, we ought to be able to get up at six thirty, right? Well, as I just explained, wrong- if Mister Bus Driver got there early, he would wait five minutes and drive on.
When you live a half hour drive from your school, (which becomes almost an hour on the bus), and your father is not the sort of guy who is pleasant about things like missed busses, you learn to catch that damn thing if it means running down the street screaming "Stop!" at the top of your lungs (as I did on at least two occasions). The worst thing that could happen to me in a day would be to miss the morning bus. I became quite skilled in the art of getting dressed in less than two minutes. The sound of air brakes on any large vehicle will wake me up diving for my clothes like nothing else. I'm not kidding.
So the past few nights I've been having dreams about missing the bus. It's awful, because I wake up with the same feeling I get when I wake up to air brakes.
I have a certain amount of control about my dreams, thankfully, in that I have a limited ability to make choices, rather than sit back and watch it all happen. Usually this is a good thing, but when I can't do anything about the damned bus... Well, I'm awake now.
I've finished the first and last scene for my ten minute play. All I have to do now is fill in the middle. I may post it here when it's done if I can make playscript format look pretty and still make sense in an entry.