The 1951 yellow school bus rolled by on the gravel road in front of his house. Incredible impossible couldn’t be happening. He watched himself as a child in first grade stare out the fifth window of that bus. Did the boy understand what was happening? Somehow, someway, they were seeing each other. An old man of 80 and a young child of 6. How could this happen? He raised the cane and waved.
The driver, a man named Jolly, glanced at him. What did he see? Just an elderly man leaning on a cane. Or did he know he carried this man as a child decades ago? Jolly raised his hand, waving as he would to another farmer. The little boy smiled, the thick glasses twinkling in the afternoon sun. The boy raised his hand and waved at what he would become. The elderly man watched the school bus cross the creek by the old iron bridge. The bus disappeared. As did the bridge to be replaced with one from just a few years ago?
Just a memory. Or was it real? Did their worlds touch for just an instance? Did he see himself as a 6-year-old child with the world opening up to him? Or was this just a glimpse of the past?