Plastic bread bags stretched over socks, squeezed into shoes and laced up. Shoes pushed through snow pants. Stretchy foot straps and feet wriggled into cold red rubber boots, quickly becoming hopelessly entangled with the inside out snow pants legs. Struggling to remove everything at once in a panic. Temperatures rising with the struggle.
Once, in first grade, I almost missed my bus home; homeward bound across the lonely stretch of Route 19. Once, I almost didn’t return home from school due to this claustrophobic entanglement.
Once, I remember the sheer panic of sitting on the old wooden floor of the classroom; alone and hearing the clatter of disappearing footsteps in the hallway; the roar of the frozen buses outside…
690 Saint Paul 