One day in fourth grade, around October, school was about to be let out for the day. Sometimes my mom was able to pick my sister, Brecklyn, and I up from school. Other days, when she was working as a substitute teacher, we had to ride the bus.

This particular day, my mom was not working, so she could pick us up. I had forgotten that she wasn’t working, so I thought I had to take the bus. As I was walking towards the bus lane, my sisters’ kindergarten teacher saw me, and in a panic, ran to find Brecklyn, who was not at the bus lane. After finding my sister, we got on the bus. As the bus was pulling away from Crestview Elementary, Brecklyn said to me, “Brailey, I didn’t think mommy was working today.” I replied to her, “No, Brecklyn, Mom is working today. She told me this morning.” We continued to argue for a couple of minutes, and during our argument the bus had pulled away from Crestview and had begun its route to Canyon Intermediate. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized my mom had been working the day before. I stood up and ran to the front of the bus and the bus driver had to turn around. She took us back to Crestview to where my mom was patiently waiting (and laughing at my hilarious mistake).

To add to the embarrassment, I was carrying a pumpkin way bigger than my little fourth grade arms could carry. This pumpkin was for a project we had been working on, where we had to decorate our pumpkin to look like our favorite book character (mine, of course, being Miss Junie B. Jones herself). On my way off of the bus, I dropped my glorious pumpkin masterpiece. My teachers rushed to help me, but by then it was too late. Junie B. had shattered into a million pieces, pumpkin guts pouring all over the ground. I ended up having to get a new pumpkin for my project and completely start over. I was so embarrassed that I started crying, and I never forgot if my mom was picking us up from school again.