On my school bus this year I carry pre-school and kindergarten, 1st to 5th grade, and then about twelve high schoolers. For me, it’s a crash course in childhood development. The funny thing is, I’ve lived all those ages myself, but at 62 you forget most of the details of what it was like.
The one pre-schooler I take to school is too small to even climb the precipitously steep bus steps by herself. Her 8th grade sister helps her up and then buckles her into the front passenger side seat. Often I can tell she’s been crying as her mother has gotten her ready to catch the bus. She sits next to her kindergarten sister who still wishes she was being buckled into a seat. They are both cute as buttons.
At other stops kindergarteners walk to the bus carrying backpacks as big as they are. Often, worried parents are watching as they climb the steps. These little people are fresh and innocent. Their eyes are bright as they say hello to me and ask if I remember their names. They love sitting next to their new found kindergarten friends. It’s like a playdate on the way to and from school. I hear all kinds of imaginings being spoken along with shouts and gleeful laughter. This sounds nice, but sometimes they get so loud and rambunctious I struggle a little to keep my calm.
The 1st through 5th graders are a wonderful menagerie of faces who pass by me on their way on and off the bus. There are usually a lot of smiles and a couple of sweet “Good morning, Tory.”
I definitely see a rise in sophistication from 1st to 5th grade. In general their innocence level falls while their intellectual and emotional complexity grows. All of the growth is within the bounds of childhood, but I’ve learned it must be taken seriously. Many children are neighbors and they bring their outside relationships onto the bus with them. This means many are friends and love to sit near each other. Of course, the opposite is true, too. I’ve already been informed by my supervisor that she has gotten a call from a mother asking that I make sure that so-and-so doesn’t sit near another child.
I know that most of these elementary students dream of the day they will be high schoolers. Although the high schoolers are just older children to me, the elementary kids look at them and see maturity, sophistication, and freedom. These children are so enamored with the idea of being a teenager that even if they looked in my driver’s rearview mirror and saw what I saw they would misinterpret it as “coolness.”
What do I see? I see a group of teens in the back who are unnecessarily isolated from their classmates, staring at their phones. I sense an invisible cloud of anxiety around them in the form of questions they have: Am I popular? Am I cool? What if I say the wrong thing? Compared to the exuberant elementary children in front of them, they look utterly miserable.
My last stop, at the intersection of a lonely, paved country road and an even lonelier gravel road, is where a pair of siblings get off. The big sister is 15 and in 9th grade. Her little brother just turned 13 and is in 7th grade. These two are unusual among the morose group of “big” kids. I hardly ever know they are back there until, as we approach their stop, they get up and start working their way to the front closing all the windows as they come. I’ve never asked them to close the windows; they just do it because they come from exceptional stock.
On this day sister comes forward alone. She sits near me and we chat as I pull up to the gravel lane. As I open the door she looks back and says, “Where’s my brother? I think he’s sleeping back there!”
I find this amusing. I’m used to small kindergarteners falling asleep on the way home, but not a more sophisticated middle schooler. She strides quickly back and I see her shaking someone behind the seat. Suddenly a head with confused eyes appears. “I scared him,” she says with a laugh as she runs up the aisle and gets off the bus. I watch with concern as brother stumbles up the aisle. At one point he falls over into a seat. Apparently his leg is asleep.
“Are you going to be able to make it home?” I ask. His house is a mile up that gravel road.
“I’ll crawl if I have to,” he answers with a sleepy grin.
He makes his way down the steps then turns and waves. “Bye. Love you!” he calls.
I raise my eyebrows. Had a sophisticated middle schooler just told me, his bus driver, that he loved me? His body language tells me that he realizes what he just said. Rather than make it awkward I just smile, wave big, and say “See you later.”
I shut the door and drive on. I know that he is planting a palm slap on his forehead and thinking, “Love you?”
What he doesn’t know is that he made my day. He didn’t just make me laugh; he let me know he comes from an affectionate family where “See ya, Mom,” or “See ya, Dad. Love you!” is so common that it slipped out to his bus driver during a sleepy moment. The world needs more mistakes like that.
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These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:
