So I ordered a few Ramona books off Amazon and they arrived yesterday evening.

I started out with Ramona Quimby: Age 8 because I loved being 8-years-old. That’s actually the only age I liked between the ages of 4 and 15. It was just a fun year.

I hadn’t read a Ramona book since I was in elementary school and wondered if it’d hold up now that I’ve become a scholarly young lady that occasionally reads Dostoevsky and the like.

Beverly Cleary could kick Dostoevsky’s ass. Within the opening paragraphs, Ramona gets onto the school bus, for her first bus ride by herself. It’s the first day of school and it’s a brand new school bus.

I had forgotten all about brand new school buses. I forgot about sliding onto a smooth new bus seat that doesn’t have tears, shredded threads, and graffiti drawn on it by miscreant elementary school kids. I forgot about the smell of new bus seats.

Anyway – although it’s not something I want to do too often, I enjoyed my little trip back into my 3rd grade mind and it’s nice to know a book I treasured as a child is just as meaningful at the age of 25.