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Janet

In article >,
says...

> I remember being taken to the west end of Toronto to catch a street car
> to my grandparent's house in the east end of the city. I was 8 and my
> little brother was 6. We had instructions for the transfers we had to make.

My infant school was on the far side of town, seven miles from home.
When I started age 5, another father and mine shared a car run to and
from it. After two years, age 7, I moved up from the infant section and
my father announced I was a big girl now, old enough to carry a busfare
purse on a string round my neck and go to school on my own. By public
service bus (no school buses then). I'd never been on a bus by myself
before. It never occurred to him to do a practise/training run with me;
he just told me what to do and I set off proud of my independence.

I walked about a half mile and crossed a busy junction to the nearest
public bus stop, bought a ticket, took a 9 bus into the centre of town,
where my Pa had told me "look for big girls wearing a (school) hat like
yours and follow them". I followed the hats a few hundred yards, caught
an 11 bus, bought another ticket and followed more hats the last
quarter mile from the bus to school.

On the first two days I twice messed up on the home journeys and
ended up in different police stations waiting to be collected by my
father.

Although I knew I had to catch an 11 back from school, I hadn't quite
grasped that the direction of travel was significant.. So at the end of
the day I followed hats to the 11 stop, right where I'd got off it that
morning, and got on it again, now heading away from town.

On day two, I caught the right 11 heading into town,changed onto a 9
and was on the home stretch... but didn't know to ring the stop bell at
my stop, and nobody else did, so the driver kept going past my road
end and I stayed on board for another mystery tour all the way to the
end of the bus route. My father was somewhat exasperated at having to
retrieve me again but it didn't occur to either of us to give up. The
next day, I cracked it. All the way to and from school by myself.
Nothing to it really...

Janet UK