麻豆视频

Only 12 per cent of today鈥檚 elementary and high school students walk or bike to their schools on a regular schedule.

How sad is that!

That means 88 per cent are getting a ride and as a result, are completely missing out on one of the best experiences a young person can have.

Walking to school can be an enjoyable adventure and, I鈥檓 sorry dear diary, our streets are not filled with predators. The route is safe, even in winter.

Wouldn鈥檛 you like to see our local sidewalks teeming with over 2,000 youngsters wending their way to respective schools with their backpacks and satchels? A little activity would probably be welcomed. Right now, what we see are bored-looking kids, stomping their feet in the cold, generally ignoring one another as they stare at phones or down the street, looking for a school bus that will pick them up. They might stand there 10 to 15 minutes for the ride that will take them four or five blocks to the school, while they could be walking and probably arriving at their destination faster than the bus riding kids.

From the earliest years right on to high school, I can鈥檛 recall riding to school in a vehicle more than a dozen times. In elementary school, it just wasn鈥檛 necessary. I lived less than two blocks from the school, so my mom had no trepidation in sending me out on my own, even in Grade 1 (no kindergarten, the school was already jammed). I always stopped at my friend鈥檚 house, three doors down and we would walk to school together. We continued that trend right through high school, often being joined by others who were using the same mode of transportation. There were 350 kids in our high school and maybe one dozen student vehicles in the parking lot, belonging to kids who lived on the outskirts of the town or nearby rural areas not served by school bus.

Our after school pedestrian journey took us downtown where we tended to our after-school jobs in stores.聽

We hated it sometimes, when it was bitterly cold. The walk to the high school was about five or six blocks. We always made it. Nobody had to send out rescue parties.

We played stupid word games en route. We even had a word association game similar to the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon that precluded the Bacon regime by a decade or so. We should have filed a copyright.

About every six or seven years Rudy and I will get together and almost immediately, before the first drink is consumed, fall into one of these stupid games that still befuddle our respective wives. We can barely make sense of them, so how could they? But we know the crazy rules, even after all these years.

Five years ago Rudy and I made our way back to the home town for it鈥檚 100^th anniversary. We walked from the rink, to the school and the town auditorium for a loooong evening of celebration and around 3 a.m. decided enough was enough. He had his old house to retreat to. I had a motel room waiting about three blocks further on. So we set out walking, and as we crossed the Bosworth Street intersection, two blocks from the school, Rudy mumbled the name Pete Rozelle. I countered with NFL rules. He countered that with Paul Horning and suddenly, our stupid word game was on, 15 years after the last time we played. We laughed, walked and remembered when getting to school was more than half the fun.