A year ago, at a stop where I pick up a whole slew of cousins, a cousin I had never met before got on. He was going to kindergarten. His hair was combed and he wore a plaid shirt and new jeans. Cowboy boots festooned his feet. His face shone with excitement and anticipation. His brothers and sisters had been getting on this bus ever since he could remember. Now it was his turn. Alas, it only lasted two days.

On the first day I noticed that this cute little boy, who I will call John, had a self-amplified voice. John always spoke as if he were at rock concert. The second thing I noticed was that he had a way of annoying the other kids in such a manner that they got physical with him. There are a lot of annoying kids on my bus, but I’ve never seen anyone with this young boy’s skill. Ironically, he wasn’t trying to be annoying. He was just excited to be with the other kids and just couldn’t keep his hands to himself. On the second morning a second grader who was large for his size got physical with John. They were in a seat directly behind me and I couldn’t see what happened, but I heard his older fourth-grade sister intervene with “Stop it. You’re hurting him.” I thought, “Uh oh,” and yelled some questions back, but apparently the incident was over.

When John didn’t get on the next morning his sister told me that he wouldn’t be riding any more. I felt bad, as if I had failed at protecting him. His father brought the brothers and sisters to the bus a few days later. He came to the bus door and rather embarrassedly told me that John just wasn’t ready to ride the bus yet. He said they had a little more work to do. I learned later that John also got suspended from kindergarten for biting another boy’s finger. Apparently the other boy stuck his finger in John’s mouth and John decided that biting was the only way to remove it. It worked.

When John got on the bus on the first day of school this year I had misgivings. He looked pretty much the same as last year: plaid shirt, clean jeans, and a look of excitement and anticipation on his face. Within about four seconds I learned that his voice was still self-amplified. By that afternoon I learned to give him the front passenger-side seat all to himself. He got along with others much better if there was space between him and them.

One day he wanted to show me what he brought to school. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out two full-sized rolling pins. “My teacher has playdough,” he said, “but she doesn’t have anything to work it with so I thought I’d help her out.” I exclaimed on how helpful he was, but asked him to put them away. In his hands on the bus they wouldn’t be rolling pins, but weapons, and most likely they would end up banging him in the head.

Apparently John has a reputation in his own family. When he fell asleep on the fifty minute ride home, as he sometimes does, I noticed that his sisters, who come up from the back of the bus, aren’t in a hurry to wake him up. In fact a couple of times they left him and I had to wake him. I drove the high school volleyball team to a tournament and overheard some of the girls telling stories about their families. John’s sister told the finger biting story. She ended with, “He’s a monster.”

Now that half the school year has gone by John and I are starting to come to an understanding. We even like each other a little. Don’t get me wrong; I still have to exert quite a bit of energy to keep him in place, but his is a face I enjoy seeing each day. He likes my stories that I tell on the long run out to his stop. I’ve learned that green eggs and ham are his favorite breakfast. “They’re delicious,” he tells me. He was a cowboy for Halloween. He didn’t think my idea of being a ballerina-cowboy (wear a tutu with his chaps) was a good idea.

Recently I played a little game with him. I offered him a candy bar if he could keep himself from standing to see over the safety partition in front of him and to stay away from the aisle where he always reaches across to put his hands on the kids seated there. Honestly, I didn’t think he could do it. He did. He suffered through two days of disappointment when I forgot to bring the candy bar. On Friday I remembered. At his stop his high school sister, the one who called him a monster, got off the bus and waited by the door. John started to get off and then stopped.

“Oh, yeah, where’s my candy bar?” he asked.

I had brought it but after the process of thirteen other stops I had forgotten about it.

“Is it in here?” he grabbed the plastic grocery sack off the dash that, indeed, contained his candy bar. I nodded and he quickly reached in and pulled out his Twix.

“All right! Full size,” he said and he clambered down the steps. His big sister glanced at me with a look of surprise and amusement on her face. Just before I shut the door I heard him say, in his amplified voice, “Don’t worry. I’ll share it with you.” The last thing I saw as I pulled away was them holding hands as they began their half-mile walk up the hill to their home.