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Author’s Note: I am a stay at home
mother who happens to hold a part time job. That job is bus driving. I
drive an elementary route and a junior high route. As you can probably
imagine, some amazing and funny events have transpired over the last few
years one of which I’ve written below. Names have been changed to
protect…well, basically, to protect me and my job.
I have a little story to tell. I’ve been pondering all week and I don’t know if I can translate real life into words for this one but I’m going to give it my best shot because the event was so entertaining. First, you have to know that on Monday one of my 8th grade boys used the “F” word. Now those boys in the back use that word quite often (they don’t know that I know this) but I don’t usually address the issue if I don’t clearly hear the cursing. Not only am I NOT their mommy, I also am not the language police because that would be a full time job and the bus would never leave the school parking lot. Anyway, there was a lull in the wave of noise that usually engulfs the bus, Jeff told someone to shut the “F” up, and I heard it clear as a bell. Jeff came to the front. Jeff was scolded and offered the choice of writing a letter of apology or being written up. He’s a smart boy, he promised me a couple paragraphs the next day about not hurting the bus driver’s ears with offensive language. A requirement of a letter of apology to the bus driver being that the writer must mean what he/she says, have a good attitude, and promise NEVER to repeat the offense. Don’t laugh, it works. My first stops occur in a new housing development. Completing my first two stops I turn a corner and then follow a curving road until I turn again. Full-scale construction is in progress on the curvy street so each day I play snake-the-bus between vans, trucks and construction vehicles. If two vehicles are parked on each side of the road I can slide through with inches between mirrors. In the event that say…a van and a wider vehicle are parked on each side of the road I have to honk until one of them moves. And I work the workers because a crew will operate in one area and then move a few blocks down to a different home a week or so later. It pays in cooperation to be nice. I smile, wave, shrug my shoulders palms up as if to say, “I’m just a woman bus driver, what do you expect?” They always smile back, wave, and MOVE. I don’t care if it’s smoozing, they move and I haven’t yet had to radio transportation requesting assistance or the police. Two days after the cursing incident, I am driving my afternoon route. Round the curve and find myself face to face with a cement truck in the middle of the road and another cement truck backed onto a lot with his nose in the street. No room for snaking. I smile, I wave, I do the helpless shrug and the driver in front of me gets on the radio to the guy behind him. He pulls his big cement truck right up to my nose and I’m thinking, “OK, he’s giving the second truck room to back about 4 feet further onto the lot and then we’ll maneuver around each other.” Nope, that wasn’t the plan. The second cement truck pulls off the lot right behind the first one. Two against one, cement trucks win. I follow proper procedure. Turning the bus off, I pocket the key (STRICT bus driver rule – never leave your keys in the ignition because some kid whose lifelong dream it is to drive a bus will jump upon the opportunity to do so), walk to the back of the bus to survey my backing options. I’ve played snake-the-bus forward many times, but never backwards. But back I did weaving from side to side around parked vehicles and around the curve. On the one hand I felt pretty good about my driving abilities but on the other I definitely was annoyed at the two cement truck drivers for making me unnecessarily back up. Let me say up front that annoyed is not a good place for me with 50 junior high kids on a backing bus. Finally reaching a spot where I could idle next to the curb the first cement truck crept past me. The guy smiled and waved because isn’t it wonderful how we all work together and now the cement trucks can get out of the way. I smiled back, teeth gritted and yelled to the back of the bus, “Hey, you know those words I won’t allow you to say on the bus?” Lots of yeahs answered me. “Well I want to you to think one right now,” I instructed. As errors go, this was a massive tactical boo-boo. I felt all the energy of the bus get sucked up in preparation of one big yell as they delightfully primed to SAY the bad words. The loss of my job flashed before my eyes. I held up my hands in a signal to stop and yelled “Ah.” You know how parents do when they urgently want the child to stop but can’t quite get the words out? All eyes were upon me. “You may only think the word on my behalf,” I instructed urgently. “You may not say it because I don’t talk that way.” It was a very close call. This happened in a matter of seconds while the first truck proceeded by. Here came the second truck, driver waving, thinking he’d done me a favor by getting out of the way. I’m thinking, “Buddy, the light’s on but the watts are dim because all you had to do was back up four feet.” So I told the kids, “Now everyone smile and wave because we are nice people even though we are thinking bad words.” Those delightfully smart children got it. They cracked up, they waved, they smiled and we proceeded down the street. The cement truck drivers probably believe we have the most amazingly friendly junior high kids in this little corner of the world. The kids think they got away with something major because they had permission to think a bad word. And I relearned that it is very dangerous to become annoyed on the bus and not to back up even one inch on standards of behavior for my bus kids. After arriving home I thought about the incident and it became funny. What if a child ran home and told his parents that the bus driver told him to think a bad word? If a parent did call the bus barn to complain would I get reprimanded for allowing the kids to think a word they already knew? I think not. But I will not be recommending bad word therapy to other drivers.
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