Orders of consciousness

Well, General Conference is over. I’ve got a paper to write. It’s due tomorrow. It’s not a difficult paper. It only needs to be 3 pages long – and I’ve finished 1 and a half already. I just don’t feel like doing it.

So I’ll blog.

I take the bus to school and have grown to appreciate the time it gives me to catch up on reading rather than watching the road. When we get close to the bus stop, the bus driver always announces, “BYU Wilkinson Center”, and I know I’d better get ready to step off.

A little over a week ago I was on the bus reading my Social Psychology textbook. The author was explaining a little about Pavlov’s work with dogs. He had conditioned a set of dogs to correlate the sound of a bell with the need for and availability of food. They would come running, salivating a ready to eat, even when they had just eaten their fill.

“BYU Wilkinson Center”, I heard.

I looked up and saw that the stoplight right before the bus stop had turned red and the bus was stopping to let pedestrians cross. All around me, fellow passengers were gathering up their things and making their way toward the door to disembark from the bus. Apparently unaware that we were not yet at our stop, people formed a line behind the still-closed door which the bus driver seemed to have no intention of opening. The woman at the front of the line turned around to glare the the bus driver. She seemed to question why the driver refused to open the door.

Some time later, the stoplight turned green and the bus rolled forward. At the designated location the bus pulled over, the door was opened and those who had lined up began to file off the bus. I, along with a select few who had remained in our seats, gathered our things and climbed off the bus. I paused to look at everyone going their separate ways.

“Wow,” I thought. “Just like the dogs.”

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