Oh, how I recall how I begged to be allowed to go to school by myself. I was the oldest kid on the school bus. Heck, I was beyond the age limit and I was a secret school bus rider. The limit was 5th grade and I was a 6th grader. The horrors of the school bus. I had my own personal bully from the public school across the street who picked on me during that ride when I was in 1st grade (and the other kid was in 5th grade, nice guy, really). By 7th grade I was allowed to take the normal bus to school with another girl and her sister who lived in my building but went to a school a few blocks away from mine. She and her sister would spend the trip putting on make-up and stripping off their bulky sweaters to reveal...rather skimpy clothes (seeing as how her sister was a 4th grader...). I didn't get to take the subway on my own until the 8th grade. It didn't matter to my parents that the subway was closer or that it ran more often than the bus. Nothing bad had happened to me on the subway *knocks on wood*. You learn all of the rules as you grow up. Avoid empty cars, don't stand at the far end of the station all alone, yadda, yadda. I will admit to having some unpleasant encounters on the street itself, but those were probably unavoidable. Once I was in a deli waiting to pay for my candy bar and the homeless man in front of me asked for a quarter so he could pay for whatever he was buying. I gave it to him and earned myself a rather unwanted bear hug and smooch on the cheek from the guy..in a store where there were plenty of adults and the cashier was right there. I actually had to take a new route to school after that because the man would yell to me whenever he saw me, "Hey sexy! I still love you. Do you still love me?". My 12 year old self was not at all happy with that.