Walking to school

I walk my dogs each morning just after 7am. Almost daily I get passed by a young teenage boy -yes my dogs are dawdlers! He has a backpack on and is obviously headed up to high school. Lord Tweedsmuir is grade 8 - 12 and is about a mile away from where I live. I'm not exactly sure what time classes begin, but most of the schools in this area start around 8:45 am. Growing up this is the high school I should have attended, but my parents moved to another part of town for 2 years and I went to a different school than my friends. My high school was an anomaly and started classes at 8am, but the bright side was we were done for the day by 2pm.

I figure it takes a teen about 20 minutes to walk one mile, so that would put this boy at the high school around 7:30 each morning, over an hour before classes start. So what is he? Some kind of keener?

When I was in elementary school it was a one mile walk, and I walked it every day, and around here it rains a lot. We had one huge hill between our house and the school. Not so bad going to school, but a huge mountain on the way home. When I was in grade 3 a family moved in 2 doors down and Cindy was in the same grade as me. I'd stop at her house and we'd walk together to and from school. However she had a nice mother. When it was raining her mom drove so I'd be able to hitch a ride and stay relatively dry.

In junior high we walked together less often. Several elementary schools in the area all funnelled into this junior high and a new lot of friends was available for choosing. Cindy was very much a jock and hung out with the girls she was in sports with. I was in band and hung out with a less active crowd. But Cindy and I remained friends even though we didn't hang out as much any more and still walked to school together occasionally.

One odd thing is a friend of mine, Nicole, who lived down town, remember at the bottom of that big old hill that I no longer had to deal with once I got to junior high, said another girl from school, Linda, often stopped by her house to walk with her. But Linda would come to their house very early in the morning, once around 6:00 and woke them all up when she rang the door bell. Her father came downstairs and told her to come back later. One day a house burned down around 5:30 in the morning. And yes, Linda was up bright and early that day, same as most other days, and was able to report to us all the action. Linda was not a good student, nor did she have a lot of friends. I have no idea why she was such a keener to get to school so early in the morning.

I hated school. I was the type who walked in the door while the bell was ringing. I'll never understand the keeners.