School bus drivers have their regular routes that they cover every school day. Then there are the special activity runs. Bus drivers want their share of these trips mainly for the extra money it brings. I like the extra money well enough. I enjoy being with the kids on these special activities even more.

Special activity runs range from overnight trips in distant towns for sporting tournaments to a two block drive to the school district office so the choir can perform at a luncheon. These special activity runs have taken me to towns I never would have seen before and to events I never would have experienced. They are as exciting for me as for the students.

Girls’ soccer is a new sporting event at our high school. When I drove the soccer girls they were still classified a club instead of a team. The first time I drove the girls to a match the acting coach told me that this was the second time most of them had ever played a match. I don’t have much interest in soccer and in spite of the sunshine the wind was nippy that afternoon. I stayed on the bus and read a book for a while, but then curiosity got the better of me. I raised the hood on my hoodie, zipped it up to my chin, and ventured out of the bus to see how the girls were doing. The score was 3-0 when I arrived at the field. Our girls were losing. I didn’t have to watch long before I was impressed, in spite of the score, at the teamwork of our girls. They were passing well and showed a lot of hustle and determination. If they were cold, and I’m sure they were, they didn’t show it.

On the bus after the game one of the girls asked the coach what the final score was.

“5-0,” she answered.

“Again?” another girl said.

“My dad came to the game,” the coach said, “He asked, ‘This is their second game?”

“Was that a good thing?” a girl asked.

“Yes! He thought you were playing far better than such an inexperienced team.”

The girls, losers at 5-0, cheered.

It was dark by the time we headed home. It was even darker being on a remote highway on a moonless night. The darkness lightened by the strains of music I heard coming from the back of the bus. The music wasn’t from an MP3 player or an iPad—it was from the girls themselves. Several of the soccer club girls were in the concert choir. They were singing choir songs in harmony. It was delightful. You don’t get that when you drive boy teams. The only selection I ever heard from the boys was when the track team sang “One-hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” They didn’t miss a bottle.

I took a group of boys to a summer basketball tournament in a town located four hours away. I picked them up two days later. It was hot. Really hot. The temperature was 114 degrees. School busses don’t have air conditioning. As we started the journey home most of the windows were down. We hadn’t gone five miles before the windows were closed. The wind coming in the window was so hot it was slightly less miserable to bake with them shut. There were plenty of seats up front, but high school students are drawn to the back of the bus like moths to a porch light. The bus engine is in the back. This raised the temperature in the back easily ten degrees compared to the front of the bus. I told the boys this, but they wouldn’t move up. Instead, a few of them just took their clothes off. They sat there in their underwear sweating profusely. The bus overheated three times and we had to stop to cool the engine. It was a miserable ride home.

One day I drove choir members to a regional competition. Kids sang in duets, quartets, and octets. Eventually the special choirs would compete. While the kids waited for the choir competition to begin they hung out in the gym. There happened to be a keyboard and a basketball present. A few kids, in their tuxedos and concert dresses took up the basketball and started shooting hoops. Another boy sat down at the keyboard and started to play music the choir had practiced. He started with “A Bridge Over Troubled Water.” A few kids circled the piano and started to sing. Soon more ran over to join in. They moved on to more difficult and more sacred pieces. They ended with “Jaberwocky,” a silly, but very difficult piece. By then most of the choir was present. There was no audience other than me and there was no choir director. The kids were singing for the sheer joy of singing. They sang in each other’s faces and acted out the parts, all things they couldn’t do on stage. The joy and fun of it was palpable in the air. Even the kids playing basketball were singing along.

I’ve driven the wrestlers, the girls’ basketball team, the boys and girls track teams, the drama club, elementary school field trips to dairies and zoos, just to mention a few. I’ve had many very memorable trips along with a couple of nightmares. The trip I had the most fun was the concert choir to state competition. The location was good for the choir (a concert hall on University of Utah campus), but bad for bus drivers. After dropping the choir at the venue it was every bus driver for himself to find a place to park and wait in that congested part of the city with the narrow streets. The fun didn’t occur until we got back to our fair, little town. Juab high is a small town high school, but in the arts it has to compete against the big city high schools. On this day the Juab Concert Choir scored right up there with the big schools. The choir director thought it appropriate to have an impromptu parade through town. She called the police and arranged for official emergency vehicles to meet us at the exit. Kids called their parents so they could join the parade.

Escort vehicles in front of the buses.

When the parade started we had a police car, an ambulance, two fire trucks, two busloads of choir kids, and about six family cars in the procession. The emergency vehicles ran their lights and sirens. The other bus driver and I blew our air horns to our hearts content. The kids stuck their heads out the windows and cheered. Cars pulled over wondering what this was all about. Many honked their horns and cheered with us. People stopped and stared in the parking lots. Some families quickly made up congratulation signs and got balloons and stood on the street corners to wave and yell. The police blocked traffic at the one red light in town so we didn’t have to stop. We made a ruckus and had the most fun on a school bus ever.

I’m just the bus driver. I’m not a part of the clubs, classes, and teams that these kids and their teachers and coaches are. I just haunt the edges of these events like a ghost observing life after his own is over. But the life of the kids and the excitement of the events are strong enough that they spill outside the lines and I get to bask in the glow anyway. I’m just the bus driver, but that still makes me lucky.