We've all heard about them. Some call them eccentric, strange, or peculiar. Others claim that they're just plain crazy. However, no matter how one classifies them, they seem to exist in just about every neighborhood. Maybe you've actually made contact with one or two in your lifetime, and maybe you haven't, but nevertheless stories about them have most likely have been passed down the grapevine to your eager little ears. They live up the street, down the street, around the corner, in the last house, in the first house, in that house on that dead end street where no one in their right mind would ever dream of making a K-turn, or just about anywhere else. They are the crazy people, the oddballs of the world, and I am cursed and blessed to be able to live up the street from one of the kind, a very special, older, "unusual" lady (who I will refer to as Mrs. Smith for the sake of this essay). Mrs. Smith is relatively short with cotton-swab white hair, and looks like your ordinary kindly old grandmother who would smile to you sweetly while offering you another plateful of warm, gooey, chocolate chip cookies. However, her actions prove her to be otherwise as will be related in the three short stories of the bus stop, the dog walk, and the snow day.
             It was a blistering, hot, humid summer day about five or six years ago when my big yellow day-camp bus came rumbling down the street to drop my awaiting siblings and I off at our stop at the end of a long, tiring day. We had to first let off the children at a stop directly before ours, and this involved stopping near that corner house on Quarry Terrace with its "Keep off the Grass" sign visible from a mile away. Seeing as this was one of my first encounters with our oh-so-welcoming neighbor, my brother, sister, and I were in states of unsuspecting innocence when that purple door swung open to reveal Mrs. Smith. She proceeded to walk up to the bus door and look menacingly up at our ...