hoping for a good first day of school. i remember when...

mr will start kindergarten this week. i'll send him off praying all goes well, and hoping it's better than em's first day of first grade two years ago. it was her first year at a new school and she'd had very bad experiences with her first mom forgetting to pick her up. of course she said she was never scared (which is sad, cause she should have been, but she was used to it). here's an email i sent to friends that day recounting the story...
Yeah, first day of school and Em’s not on the bus when it drops Cj off!!! Cj yells out the window that Em’s not there, the driver asks us if we have her. So I tear back into the house and out the back door into the van and race down the road. In the meantime apparently, Dad turns around to tell me he’ll go to school and I can stay home with the boys but instead I called him and said I was halfway to school. Fortunately we’re 2.5 miles from school and apparently if you’re in a hurry it takes 1.5 minutes to get there. My worries were two-fold, first if she was at school feeling let down yet again. Her mom used to forget her, a lot (amounting to child endangering charges) so I thought here we are first day of school and I’ve let her down. (How do I make her understand we didn’t forget her? How do I make her not be scared? How do I tell her this is different?...)Or someone else picked her up and I’ll have to kill someone. (Where do I look first? I’ll have to call the police, but I’m not waiting on them. I can use my big Honda key, that’ll go all the way thru the eye into the brain!...)I didn’t know which one I hoped for! That was a horrible feeling knowing that either option would be bad, either for her physically or mentally or both. Man I was fuming!So I got there and they were on the radio with the bus driver still. Then they radioed all the drivers and another bus says they have her, she’d just gotten on the wrong one. Shew!!!! So I asked the secretary nicely (well okay I yelled a lot) how this happened and she said her teacher puts her on the bus, so I said well I need her teacher up here right now. So she got there and I yelled more. Then she explained the process and all that and the principal came in and joined the conversation. He said what exactly happened, I’m not sure I understand. I said you lost my daughter, that’s what. And I might have yelled more. Then we went on to discuss security and how they would from now on be sure she’s physically on the bus and what they’ll do if anyone else tries to pick her up, etc. Btw, they’ll call the police (state law), but also call me since I’m close (and can come dish out justice my own self!). I told them how important this was to her self esteem and feeling of security and all that, plus that her former family is a security risk and unstable and all that. I really don’t think we’ll have any more issues, as I don’t think any of them are likely to forget this for a while. She got home an hour later after a long boring bus ride, not a bit scared, just laughed that she got on the wrong bus. That says something for her feeling of security, so that was great to see. She and Cj both now know to tell the driver if the other’s not on there from now on too. And her teacher even called to be sure she got home okay and was alright. We can’t tell what happened, but Em said she was in line but the principal said the bus was over “there” but she went over “there” the wrong way. She’s not good at paying attention, but then I personally don’t think a 6 yr old should have the opportunity to be wrong, especially on the first day. But like I said, I doubt it’ll happen again. I’ll probably need to apologize to those three at the open house in a few days. But at least they know how important it is. Sigh, so thus ends the first day of school! :)