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• Two-income family, middle-class problems
• Mean mom
• Public transit fail

Two-income,middle-class problems

We have been a two-income, middle-class family pretty much since the kids were in early elementary school. Dave and I did our best not to flaunt our money, or even really let the kids know how much we made. What we emphasized was hard work, carefully examining the necessity of a purchase, and then saving to pay cash for purchases. Those purchases included anything from school supplies to school clothes to cars. If we couldn't pay cash, chances are we didn't buy it. As the kids grew and wanted their own money, we encouraged them to get their own jobs. Dave and I had anticipated them eventually wanting/needing their own car to get to work. So we saved, asked each child to contribute some money, and purchased each child a car. What we missed was giving them an opportunity to learn about alternate forms of transportation, such as the public transit system. Honestly, I never thought about teaching them about riding the bus, mostly because we always had working cars and didn't need to learn about the bus.

Mean mom

We sold Katelyn's car when she was out on her mission. We told her when she returned we would help her purchase a new car. We had over a year to save and figured it wouldn't be too much of burden to fulfill this promise. Unfortunately, there was a car mishap back in May that required us to use up the funds in our car account. So Katelyn returned from her mission, got herself a job and we told her she would have to figure out the public transit system. OH. MY. HECK! That solution to the no-car problem seemed reasonable to me, but sent Katelyn into a full-blown meltdown. She pretty much freaked out because she would have to ride the bus. The HORROR!

Now, realizing that I had a "mom fail" by not teaching the kids earlier about how to ride the bus, I didn't leave her to figure it out all by herself. I helped her access the STA website and find out what route she needed to follow. We found a picture of the fare box so she knew how to pay her fare. We found out about transfer passes so she didn't pay the fare every time she transferred buses. I pointed out the bus stop so she knew where she needed to catch the bus. I tried my best to fix the earlier fail and help make this a doable experience. And then I told her that riding the bus was just going to be how it is until there were enough funds saved to purchase a car. No amount of tears and hyperventilating was going to change the fact that she would need to figure out how to ride the bus.

Public Transit Fail

So yesterday was the day. Her bus stop was right outside the middle school so I arranged my schedule so she could drive to the middle school, drop off the car, and go catch the  bus. That part of the plan went just as planned. She got to the middle school in plenty of time, made it out to the bus, and made it through her first transfer.

And then this...

The second bus was supposed to make a stop at Argonne village (a half mile from her work). She sent me a text asking if there was another bus she needed to take because this one only stopped at Argonne and Trent. I said not according to the routes. I asked her if she showed the route map to the driver. She said the driver said the only stop was a Trent and Argonne. I asked if she was on Bus 32. She said yep. I texted her back to ask the driver again. It was a no go.

BOTHER!

 I told her to get off at the Trent and Argonne stop and I would come get her. That stop was over a mile away from her job and she didn't have enough time to cover that much distance. I picked her up and got her to work just in the nick of time. As we were driving by where the bus was supposed to stop, she said that she even pulled the bell to notify the driver that she was getting off there, but the driver wouldn't stop.

I did notify STA about the driver not stopping and they wrote up the incident. Hopefully the driver will figure out the proper stops by Tuesday; that is Katelyn's next trip to work on the STA.

Good news was that today was her first time riding the bus home and it was a success! (Her dad felt bad that she had such a bad experience going to work that he picked her up from work yesterday.)