For many years during the brief drive to my office in downtown Mt. Clemens, I would daily pass an elementary school near the train tracks on Cass Avenue. The school sits within eyeshot of the old train station where Thomas Edison once learned to operate the telegraph. The legend goes that Edison one day saved the station master’s child from being run over by a train, and in appreciation he taught the young Edison how to work the telegraph.
Each day as I passed the school I would observe the teacher who served as the cross-walk guard waved to every car and made eye contact with each driver as they passed. In the mornings the traffic was heavy and I never understood how this woman, rain or shine, could so vigorously wave to so many drivers. I had the thought she was doing this to remind the drivers to slow down because children had to cross the road and there were no traffic lights or even a designated cross walk for the charter school students.
Read more at Psychology Today.
