June 28. The last day of school. It’s hard to imagine all the things that might go through the minds of youthful passengers of a school bus heading home on a day like that. You know that it probably hasn’t been the quietest homeward run of the whole year. Even the limited view through the rear windows of the bus is proof of that.
Several young passengers bounce out at one stop, turn, wave, shout and then dash down the driveway to home and a waiting summer. They are a contrast to the next stop as little farther down the highway.
There two boys of Grades 2 to 4 variety stop out gingerly, and then carefully cross the pavement in front of the bus and head past the mailbox and up their driveway. One is carefully cradling a contraption of some sort made of popsicle sticks and some streamers of coloured tissue.
The other is shielding a petunia, or something like that, growing in a Styrofoam cup while he drags his backpack through the dust.
Somehow you get the impression that whatever their academic achievements for the year might have been, those two items will have priority in their memories of the year gone by.
And, who know, somewhere in the future one may graduate with a degree in engineering and the other in botany.
That last part is pure speculation. But if the petunia and the popsicle sticks survived that bus ride home their creators have certainly demonstrated the determinations to see things through a successful conclusion.
It says of the apostle Paul that he was a tent maker by trade. (Acts 18:1-4)
Obviously a practical skill that he relied on from time to time.
And, who knows, maybe that skill was something that he started to learn as a young boy.