I’m at summer camp, I’m a counselor, and it’s my day off.

It’s also my buddy Josh’s day off.

I think we had two days off in a row, and we’re gonna go somewhere.

I don’t remember where we went.

It might have been New York City, it might have been Binghamton, but either way, we were driving, probably New York City.

And Josh was driving, and I was in the passenger seat, which is a great place for passengers to go when they’re not the ones driving.

And we get to a toll booth, and this is in the days before E-ZPass, and Josh has a stack of quarters, and he hands me the four quarters we need for this toll.

And I’m like, why are you giving them to me?

He’s like, toss them in.

And I’m like, what are you talking about?

He’s like, just toss them in.

So he lowers my window, and he wants me to throw the quarters over the car into the thing.

And one by one by one by one, each one goes in perfectly.

I’m sure I’ve told this story in the podcast before, perhaps recently.

Then we get to the next toll booth, and it was hilarious that this is worth the first time, and he hands me more quarters, and every single one misses, and then we have to scrounge around on the ground at the toll machine to find the coins.

And we found a whole lot of other coins that weren’t our coins.

I’m not sure what word I just said there.

I think I tried to say a whole bunch and a whole lot at the same time, but I don’t even think I said bot.

I think I just said sound.

But anyway, every time I approach a toll booth, I remember that story.

Even though I don’t use dollars or coins to pay tolls anymore.

I use E-ZPass.

And every time we go through E-ZPass, it says, E-ZPass paid.

And I think, no, I did.

Your Daily Lex.

Tomorrow is the first day of school, not for me.

I’m finished with school, but my kids all have school for the first day of tomorrow.

I think this has to be some of the latest school starts in the country.

The country being the United States of America.

Even neighboring towns started school today.

But man, the bus stop assignment came out.

And historically, the bus stop has been, a couple of years ago, it was directly in front of our house.

That was great.

That was at the end of the cul-de-sac, also fine.

Then last year, as you may recall, it was, you went all the way to the end of our cul-de-sac, and then you turned left all the way down to the next street.

And I successfully lobbied the school transportation office to change that and move it back to our end of the street.

Because it made more sense.

There were three buses all conglomerating at the other stop, and it was a mess.

It was nuts.

And they were like, oh yeah, it doesn’t make any sense, especially since all the kids are closer to your street, so we’ll move the bus there.

This year, Sierra got the bus stop assignment and sent me a screenshot after I said that what she was describing couldn’t possibly be accurate, and of course it was, which is the bus is now 0.5 miles away from the house.

And basically you have to walk to the end of our cul-de-sac, then turn left and go all the way to the other street where the bus stop was initially last year.

Then turn right and go all the way down that street, which is pretty long, to get to the entrance to our development.

And then at least in one direction, you’ll have to cross over that street whose speed limit is 45 miles per hour to get to the bus.

So, and there’s no crosswalk there, because it’s not a place where you’re meant to cross the street.

So that’s where the bus stop was.

And I was like, well, I can try to appeal, but let me review what the school’s policies are for transportation this year.

And I did.

And the policies were like, your bus stop might be as much as a mile away.

And this year we’re not gonna go into as many developments to try to make the buses more efficient and blah, blah, blah.

You may remember, we had a host of bus issues last year.

So, you know, all exciting stuff.

And I did, you know, well, I tried to do their appeal process, which was online, but that link forward.

But I still had the email address from the people who helped me last year.

And so I wrote to them.

I said, look, last year you helped me.

Last year you helped me for this reason.

I know that you’ve got new policies this year, and I know that this is a long shot, but I still wanted to ask.

And here are the reasons why I’d like you to do this.

It’s not even, you know, I can handle my kid having to walk a half a mile, even if it’s raining, even if it’s cold.

But it’s this crossing of the street that I really don’t like.

Plus you want them at the SAT 10 minutes before their stop.

The pickup time is already extremely early, like 6.30.

And so you want them there 10 minutes earlier, that’s 6.20.

Like this is, and it’s a, you know, 11 minute walk.

This is a cray cray.

And they were back pretty quickly within a couple hours to say tough crap, Lex Friedman and your kids.

And in this case, they meant this Lex Friedman, not the other one.

And yeah, so very sad for my kids.

Really very sad for their parents, because it means we’re gonna have to drive them to the bus stop.

Now Ani can drive to school and you have joint custody of a parking spot.

So Ani’s gotta drive the other kid to school with whom Ani shares the spot.

And then, you know, Ani can take Sierra, but friend or parking lot sharer can’t take Sierra until friend turns 18, because of the way the laws work in New Jersey for young drivers.

And Sierra’s like, well, so many people break the law.

They should just break the law and drive me.

And I’m like, I understand the parents don’t want her to break the law and drive you, so tough.

So yeah, Sierra’s gonna have to take the bus at least half the time.

That’s the point.

And that means we gotta get up super early to drive Sierra to that bus stop, because I’m not gonna make my kid walk a half a mile to a bus stop.

That seems terrible.

And yeah, yeah, that’s it.

That’s my story.

The bus is disappointing.

At least there’s no tolls.

See, I made a full circle.

I don’t know.

Lex.

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