Now that school is back in session, mid-valley commuters must be prepared for the seasonal return of traffic congestion in the morning and afternoon.

It’s not as bad as in the metropolitan areas, of course, and sitting in your vehicle drumming your fingers on the steering wheel may be a small price to pay for knowing that thousands of young Americans are back to being schooled, learning what they need to know to become productive taxpayers and contributors to Social Security in 10 or 20 years.

Still, it’s sometimes more than a little unnerving to sit there while everybody else seems to be taking their sweet time.

The school bus stops, as it is supposed to, and everybody in front of it and in back stops, as they should. Two kids are waiting to board the bus.

Do they jump on and does the bus take off? No. The kids gather themselves and their stuff and saunter up from where they were waiting, a safe and longish distance from the road. Mom has taken them to the bus stop, and she waves. They turn around and wave back — a happy little family. Now they’re ready to get on the bus, and they hoist themselves up the steps as though they had rheumatism and were 90 years old.

Does the bus then get going? Hardly. It waits until the little ones are properly stowed in their seats. The seconds flow by and everybody’s life expectancy gets that much shorter.

That fictional scene is not far from what happens all over the mid-valley on weekday mornings during the school year. It was a distant memory, which had faded since June. But now it is back.

And then you have to figure in all the pupils being chauffeured to school by their parents, probably because they have too much equipment to lug back and forth, up to and including the occasional tuba. So you can count on traffic being heavy again in the morning, and the p.m. too, although it’s less of an issue in the afternoon.

So if you figure on getting to work at the usual time, better leave 10 or 20 minutes early starting now. (hh)