I would ride the bus to school. We lived in the country and we were the first on the bus each morning, which was around 6am all year long. My brother and I started riding when I turned 8 and he was still 6. I remember the first day we had to catch it. My mother walked us both to the end of our long gravel driveway that goes uphill and waited with us. It wasn't too scary for us at the time because we had already met the bus driver the week before. She had also been my father's bus driver back in the day.
I loved back to school supply shopping. Organizing my backpack, binder and pencil box was the best, but my favorite was a brand new day planner. I loved a clean slate!
I still remember my very first day of school in the fall of 1982. I even remember what I wore (red and white striped tank top and red shorts). It was pretty traumatic because I did NOT want to go. I missed my mom so much that I cried in class every day for the first week. I am sure my teacher was at a loss and didn't know what to do with me!
Although I hated school, I loved back-to-school shopping and getting school supplies. I love pens and stationery to this day!
I grew up in the middle of the country and had to take the bus to school. I don't know how or when it started but my brothers and I had quite a funny way of saying that the bus was almost at the house. We had "neighbors" about 1/2 mile around the corner from my parents but you could see the bus stop in front of their house and the next stop was ours. The neighbors' name was Fisher, so when one of us would see the bus at their house we would yell "Bus is at Fishers!!" We will still occasionally say this to each other now just to trigger that sense of panic from when you were a kid about to miss the bus!
A friend and I rode our bikes to the high school on registration day. I, graceful as ever, wrecked my bike and scraped my knees to shreds. Most of the streets were dirt roads (the one I grew up on is still a dirt road). We walked/limped our bikes back to my house and my mom had to clean and bandage my knees and then drove us to register. Great first impression!