Driving a school bus involves anxiety. The first thing that comes to many people’s mind when they think of driving a bus is having to deal with rude and riotous children. Yes, there is anxiety in that. The anxiety is even worse when you have a load of forty high schoolers and you are trying to change lanes on the freeway in heavy Salt Lake City traffic. You can hear the kids in the back teasing and laughing oblivious to the semi-truck on your right, the mini-van on your left and the wave of brake lights rising up in front of you. The anxiety gets even worse after you are shown a video during the yearly bus driver safety training. The video features a man who had been a bus driver for fifteen years. He is of a humble disposition—maybe even a little broken in spirit. We quickly learned why. During a moment of distraction, after unloading two little boys, he unknowingly ran over one of them. The boy died. When the video ended one of our longtime bus drivers broke the silence saying, “I quit.” Yes, there is anxiety involved in driving a school bus.

There are a lot of rules we are trained and retrained on aimed at keeping the kids safe. Most are involved with loading and unloading. When you approach a bus stop most of the kids are already in a huddle or a line waiting for you. Often you will see others who are late running for the bus stop. They might be approaching from the rear or running across the street in front of you. There might be some shoving going on in the line of kids and a child might be pushed out in front of the bus. I’ve seen frisbees land in the road and a child will ignore the approaching forty foot bus to retrieve it. We are taught to turn on our yellow flashers before we arrive to let following cars know we are stopping. The yellow flashers turn to red and our stop signs extend when we open the door. We keep the bus well out in the road to help discourage traffic from passing. We stop before we reach the line of kids to make them come to us.

After the kids load you take the time to look in all your mirrors to make sure there are no kids standing beside the bus, or worse, crawling under the bus after something they dropped (it happens). You close the door and let the bus roll forward without pressing the gas pedal so that you can stop more quickly just in case you suddenly see something you didn’t see before. Doing these things isn’t necessarily difficult. What is difficult is doing these things consistently day after day week after week. You might be distracted by difficulties at home, a headache, or a student who is having a bad day. Keeping the safety focus is difficult for a human being.

I was unloading children at various stops along a highway that sees a lot of traffic. A car was following close behind my bus. I’m sure the driver was frustrated each time he saw the flashing, red, “STOP” sign extend. As I braked and stopped at the house with the cute, little, miniature horse out front my attention turned to a ten-wheel dump truck that was approaching. I had turned my yellow flashers on before I stopped warning him of what I was going to do. If he was empty he would have had plenty of time to stop. He had a full load of gravel. I had a brother and sister who were getting off and who would be crossing the highway  to their home. The speed of the dump truck and the look in the truck driver’s eyes told he wasn’t going to be able to stop. His load was too heavy. His brakes were squealing, but the truck wasn’t slowing. He was imagining what I was imagining—that kids would  run across the road as he arrived. I was able to stop the kids before they got out and the tragedy in my imagination didn’t happen.

On another day I stopped on a residential street to unload a boy. Two cars obeyed my red STOP sign and stayed behind me. In my rear-view mirror I saw the boy who was to get off stand up in the back of the bus.  I looked out my windows and in my mirrors while waiting for him. When he didn’t reach the front I looked again. He was still in the back. He was working his way toward the front, but was taking time to hug each person on the bus as he went. I was substituting on this route and didn’t know this boy. Apparently he was mentally handicapped in a manner that made him very friendly. I watched the other student’s reactions as he reached them. Some smiled and hugged back. Others just endured the love. I was aware of the drivers waiting behind the bus. I imagined them slapping their steering wheels in impatience. I was tempted to yell at the boy to stop it and hurry and get off. When I checked in the mirror again I decided to keep my mouth shut. Seeing the boy’s good will and seeing the good nature of the kids being hugged, I didn’t want to stop such a happy thing.

As he finally approached the front of the bus I looked at the twelve-year-old girl who had been giving me directions and said, “Here comes your hug.” She rolled her eyes in a cute way and nodded. When the boy hugged her I saw her grin. He got off and I turned the corner letting the cars behind me escape.  I don’t know how impatient the drivers’ of the cars actually were, but I thought they could probably use a hug.