Not once in all my years did driving a school bus cross my mind. Not when I was in elementary school (I was going to be a fighter pilot). Not when I was in high school (I was going to be an astronomer). Not when I was getting a master’s degree in college (I didn’t know what I was going to be then, but it wasn’t going to be a school bus driver). All I knew about being a school bus driver was from the TV show “The Simpsons” with its long hair, acid rock listening, slightly stoned-sounding bus driver. It wasn’t until I reached a slightly more desperate time in my life when a friend and school bus driver made me aware of an upcoming opening on the school bus driving force. I was ready.

I remember the first time I climbed into the driver’s seat of the bus, popped the parking break, and eased out of the bus compound onto the public streets. In my youth I had driven a ten-wheel truck during the potato harvest in Idaho. While in college I had driven a dump truck and even a garbage truck (that was fun). I had never driven something forty feet long where the front wheels are six feet behind me. It was exciting.  What made it so exciting was that driving the bus felt like I was driving a truck—you know , the big semi kind of truck. Every man has thought at least once of getting behind the wheel of one of those and rumbling down the freeway. My bus had air brakes that hissed and squelched. It had clearance lights along with many other exterior lights that lit it up like a circus. Best of all, I had an air-horn just like a truck. Yes, I pulled the cord a few times just for the fun of it.

On my first highway drive  I passed a semi going the other way. The truck driver and I looked at each other levelly in the eye. I commented with pleasure to my trainer, “I’m sitting as high as a truck driver!”  She just smiled.

Even though my bus had everything a semi had it was still just a school bus. I may sit as high, have as many lights, and have an air-horn, but I’m still not driving a truck. There is a difference seeing a bright yellow, flat faced school bus coming down your street and seeing a semi with its long trailer rolling slowly past. It hadn’t occurred to me that I had passed the same test that truck drivers passed. The only difference was that I took the passenger angle of the test while they took the cargo angle. Yes, I had a Class C commercial driver license. Us professionals call that a CDL. I had no reason to feel inferior to the truck driver because he carries frozen potatoes and I carry eighty-four screaming kids. (Actually the kids aren’t screaming most of the time.)

It wasn’t until I was driving the choir on a special event trip that I became validated as a professional driver. The freeway was busy. Cars and trucks weaved in and out as they sparred for position. Buses aren’t particularly fast, but on a hill I passed a semi which must have had a full load—it struggled a little. I signaled that I was going to pull back in front of him. In my rear-view mirror I saw him blink his lights at me to let me know that I was clear. What a thrill. I had seen truck drivers do that for each other throughout my years of driving, and now one had done it for me. He had shown me a professional courtesy. I sat a little higher in my seat. It wasn’t too many more miles down the road when I passed another semi. I looked over as I passed. The truck driver gave me the two fingered salute that starts at the brow and swings forward. It’s done casually like, “we professional drivers understand each other.” I almost gasped with the thrill. He had shown me the respect of an equal. Now I sat completely straight in my seat. (It’s an air cushioned seat, by the way.) I held my head high and proud.

A month later I was driving the girls’ basketball team and their coaches to a game in Coalville, UT. To get there I would have to drive 101 miles and navigate the 7,120 foot Parley’s Summit.  In  Nephi, where the trip began, the sky was overcast, but the roads were dry. By the time we reached Salt Lake City the overcast skies had gone from gray to black. When hail-like snow started hammering against the bus I saw drowsy heads pop up behind me to see what was going on. They should have kept their eyes closed because it only got worse. By the time I turned onto the belt-route it was snowing heavily. The roads were covered. Oh, great, I thought. My anxiety level was rising. By the time I reached Parley’s Canyon we were in an all-out blizzard. Snow wasn’t falling; it was attacking. The wind drove it angrily across the road. It would swirl and rise back up into the sky against the current before falling suddenly again. I saw what looked like 100 trucks pulled over putting on chains.

I slowed down to residential neighborhood speed and wondered if I should drive on. I contemplated how I came to find myself in the driver’s seat of a bus full of kids on a mountain road in an angry January blizzard. I could feel the weight of their lives on my shoulders. I wondered if any of my passengers were scared. I was. The answer came when one of the coaches made his way up to the seat behind me. Leaning around the side he asked, as casually as he could,

“So this is your bus?”

“Yes.”

“You drive it every day?”

“Every day.”

“Okay,” he said. He returned to his seat.

Translated, he was asking “How experienced are you and how scared should I be?” My answers were as vague as his questions, but he seemed satisfied.

The drive was slow.

“What time does the game start?” I asked a coach.

“They won’t start without us,” he deadpanned.

The girls were fairly quiet in the back. The windshield wipers groaned on every other stroke. We passed several cars along the way that had pulled off to the side to wait out the storm. The drivers looked up at me with frightened, questioning eyes as we passed. The storm didn’t let up until we reached Coalville.

After I dropped the team off at the high school I felt euphoria come over me. It was the same feeling I felt after coming through Haystack Rapids on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. The chaos and danger was behind us. I had driven safely and in control the entire way. This was an accomplishment I was proud of as a professional driver. The safe arrival also made me feel grateful and humble. I know I didn’t want to drive back through that storm. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. The storm had passed south by the time we returned.

It was some weeks later when I was driving the girls’ basketball team to another game. We had to drive through an even nastier canyon to get to this one. Fortunately the skies and roads were clear. After the game and after we had stopped to eat the girls were boarding the bus. There was a lot of chatter and laughter as the girls filed past me. Suddenly one of the girls stopped. She put her fingers on my shoulder to get my attention. It worked. Passengers never touch the bus driver.  “I just wanted to say thank you for driving so safely through that blizzard a few weeks ago. I was so scared.” Then she went on to her seat. I don’t know who she was. It was dark and I couldn’t see her face. Can teenagers be so thoughtful and kind? A school bus may not be a truck, but the kids we haul and the pleasant surprises they bring make up for it.