Our transportation supervisor added two drivers to the driver pool this year. One of the new-hires was a neighbor of mine from up the street. John recently retired from the state road department. He spent many years driving dump trucks, plows, and other equipment in the heat of summer and the blizzards of winter. Having driven trucks for years John assumed that moving to a bus would be a natural step.

Over the summer he attended forty hours of training. In July all of the bus drivers, including John, attended a mandatory eight hour in-service training. During the training the veteran bus drivers shared colorful stories of some of the more difficult situations they have encountered on their buses. We watched movies on everything from the many ways to get fired (laws not to break) to how to deal with problem children. John was sitting next to me and I recognized the look on his face—he was overwhelmed. I spent my first two years as a school bus driver feeling like that.

The actual driving of a bus isn’t more difficult than driving a snowplow, but add on all the laws and regulations, along with the complications of managing children’s behavior, and the snowplow job seems simple. John had the realization that if he broke one of those many rules, and a child just happened to get hurt, he could end up being censured, fired, or sent to jail. That realization is a real eye opener for a new school bus driver. You never really get over it even after years of driving—you just learn to live with it.

After listening to the veteran bus drivers tell their horror stories a new driver is understandably spooked. What if that happens to me? What will I do? I’ve tried to envision certain scenarios so that I can consider what I would do. These efforts often end fruitlessly. There are just too many variables. You just have to wait and see and hope that your reason and training don’t fail you.

John got put to the test on his very first day he drove a load of kids solo. He had picked up a load of students at the elementary school. He dropped these kids at their stops on the way to the middle school across town. At the middle school he loaded another 55 kids. Just as he was about to pull out the secretary at the elementary called him on the radio. She wanted to know if he had Jimmy Thomas, a kindergartener, on his bus. John, who was a substitute as well as a new driver, didn’t think so, but he would check. After some confusion while sorting through the middle-schoolers, Jimmy stepped out from behind one of the seats.

The secretary said that Jimmy wasn’t supposed to be on the bus. He was supposed to come to the office after school and wait for a van from a child care service to pick him up since his parents worked until later. John, being new, had no idea what to do about the situation. He asked the secretary what she thought. The secretary, new to the job herself, also wasn’t sure how to remedy the situation. She finally decided to call the child care service and have them come to the high school to pick up Jimmy. John agreed to wait thinking it would only be a few minutes.

This was playing out over the radio with all the other bus drivers listening in as we made our stops. I could hear the stress in John’s voice. I understood his stress. He had a load of middle-school students waiting to be taken to their stops in a small town ten miles south of the middle school. He also had a kindergartener who was not supposed to be going with them. The parents would be frantic if they knew their child was miles away from where he was supposed to be. The parents of the middle-school students expected their kids to be home by a certain time, too. How was he supposed to take care of both situations? John was feeling the weight of being responsible for living cargo.

The radio went quiet after the school secretary said she would call the child care provider. The rest of us bus drivers went on with our routes. Ten minutes later the radio came to life as I heard John call the elementary school and ask where the van was. The stress in his voice had increased. He had been sitting for ten minutes with a full load of middle school students and one kindergartener.

All drivers know that the longer you sit on a stationary bus with a load of kids the more restless the kids become. I’ve seen my bus rocking like a row boat carrying three drunks before when I was in a waiting situation. My heart, and I’m sure the hearts of the other drivers, went out to him. Even as I felt for him I smiled at the irony of the situation—a new driver having this problem on his first day.

The secretary, very apologetically, told john that she had called the child care service and that they should have been there already. She didn’t know where they were or what to do now. She finally suggested that John take Jimmy into the high school office. The child could wait for the child care service there.

“You want me to take him into the high school office?” John repeated

I’m pretty sure all the veteran bus drivers who were listening in recoiled at this idea. The people in the high school office wouldn’t know what to do with the kindergartener. John would be leaving a bus load of middle schoolers, who were already becoming unruly, unattended. It was a bad idea.  At this point the training supervisor, who is also a regular bus driver and had been listening to the adventure, showed mercy on John and gave a suggestion.

“Perhaps it would be best if you drove Jimmy back to the elementary school and he could wait there at the office.”

This is what each of the other veteran would have done immediately after learning that an errant kindergartener was on their bus. There certainly would have been no waiting around with a load of middle school students on board. Poor John, having no experience, didn’t know he could do that. Instead he waited in a panic feeling like the world was coming to an end.

“Uh, okay,” he said, seeing the sense in this.

I was fifteen miles into my afternoon run when John finally got back to the elementary school. Over the radio I listened as there was a little more confusion getting the kindergartener from the bus to the office. Finally it was resolved and John was on his way with his load of kids. The rest would be easy.

“990, 13” I called using our bus numbers as identifiers.

“This is 990,” he replied.

“Welcome to bus driving,” I said.

There was a pause. Then I heard him key his microphone. “Uh,” there was strained laugh—half stress, half relief, “thanks.”