The daily morning pick-ups and afternoon drop-offs are the routine of the school bus driver. It’s the activity trips that spice up our job. On Thursday morning at nine a.m. I began loading thirty-five FFA students who were on their way to the State FFA convention. The next three days were a nice break to my routine.

I live in a very small country town and signs of FFA (Future Farmers of America) are all around me. Often there are flyers announcing events and activities. Sometimes I see kids in the iconic blue FFA jackets. Even so I know very little about the program. I picture kids raising, grooming, and selling animals. It seemed probable to me that there would be animals at the convention. When the kids started arriving to load the bus I was surprised. These weren’t kids who were dressed to be working with animals—the boys were in black dress pants, white shirts, and ties; the girls wore black skirts, black tights, white blouses, and a tie. Both genders wore their short, blue FFA jackets with Mt. Nebo printed clearly on the back. They were dressed for business and they looked really nice.

The thirty-five kids filled the bus comfortably. Many had a seat to themselves while a few others had to share. School buses aren’t the most comfortable mode of travel. The high seat backs in the newer buses like mine make it so the kids can’t see those in the seats in front and behind them. So what do the kids want to do? They stand up to talk completely negating the safety feature of the padded seat backs. These kids were pretty good about staying seated although, “Sit down,” is the first call over the intercom after each loading.

I’ve been on other three-day trips where I drop the kids at their venue, and, except for lunch, leave them there all day. I get to go do what I want during that time. It’s like a vacation. Not on this trip. I drop them for lunch and then pick them up an hour later. I drop them at the venue and pick them up two hours later. I drop them at the motel for dinner and pick them up two hours later. I drop them at the venue for more meetings and pick them up three hours later. I drop them at the motel so they can change into street clothes for the night’s extra activity. I drop them at the venue where they see a hypnotist show and then pick them up at 11:15 pm for the last time that day. It is a lot of back and forth that keeps me on my toes. I can do what I want in those times in-between, but I can’t get so lost in what I am doing so as to miss the next pick up time.

The next day it’s much of the same back and forth. The activity on this night was a dance. It was fun to see the kids change out of their official FFA dress into their dance clothes. Their dance clothes were mainly jeans and nice button-up shirts, but I could tell they were brought special for the dance. It was mainly cowboy boots all around. I was able to come a bit early and look in on the dance. I watched 500 FFA kids do the Macarena. It was great.

Because this was a well-attended state event there were school buses everywhere. It was fun to check out the school district printed on the sides of the buses to see where they came from. The district names are usually the name of the county they serve. There are many like Wayne, Emery, and Garfield that I have no idea where they are in the state. I talked to one bus driver from a rural area who picks up kids in a town thirty-five miles away from the high school. That’s a long daily route. She talked of narrow misses with elk and deer in the canyons. I talked with another bus driver who had been driving for twenty-nine years. She was confident and pleasant after all her experience. I couldn’t help but feel what a rookie I am after my one year of full-time bus driving.

Parking at large events such as these is always an adventure. Bus drivers are on their own to find a place to put their forty-foot rig. Quite often a natural order will develop and buses will line up front to rear or beside each other. Other times buses just park helter-skelter wherever they can find space. There was a little bit of both at this venue. At the motel four of us lined up nicely on the vacant lot next door. I had a secret little lane I discovered where I dropped the kids off at the venue. It put them close to the entrance and we didn’t have to line up behind the other buses. On the second day another bus driver figured it out and beat me there. Sometimes you just can’t trust another bus driver.

The best part of the trip was the kids themselves. There is something invigorating about being close to youth. There was such a range of personalities that the more self-controlled kids balanced out those prone to acting out.

“No swearing on the bus!” one girl called out boldly as she got on and heard some farmyard language near the back. It was gratifying to see her in action. She wasn’t preaching. She was one of them and well-liked and appeared to just want to make the speaker be his best self. Another time I heard another girl call out amid the cacophony “This is a G-rated bus.” You don’t get that with all the different groups of kids you carry.

I sit in my seat as they load and their faces become familiar to me. After they see me a few times some of them will start to meet my eyes with a smile or a nod. I love it when that happens. A large part of this group would thank me for the ride each time they got off. Considering I dropped them sometimes six times in a day this almost got annoying. I try to respond sincerely and uniquely to each. Am I complaining about their consideration? No, I say keep annoying me!

I was opening the bus compound gate after I had made the final drop at our high school so I could pull the bus in and park it. The kids’ parents were picking them up and taking them home after their three-day adventure. As I pulled on the gate I heard a honk. I looked up to see an arm with the blue FFA jacket sleeve stretched out the window. A voice called “Thank you,” as the car passed and went on down the road. It had been a good trip.

Actual experience may vary from this recruitment video.

When I think of Valentine’s Day’s of my youth nothing substantial comes to mind except for a Valentine’s Day when I was in the second grade. We were each to bring a homemade valentines box to class and enough valentines for everyone. My Mom made my box for me. It was covered in shiny tin foil and had some colorful trimmings. I thought it was beautiful. In class there was a vote for the best valentine’s box. The teacher stood by the boxes and called out the name of the box’s owner. Mine was one of the first. Very few voted for it. This hurt my feelings so much I decided not to vote for anyone else’s box. I showed them. That’s one of my few memories of second grade. Consequently I don’t remember second grade fondly. Thanks a lot Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day was on a Saturday this year. On the Friday morning run I noticed many of my elementary kids getting on the bus with colorful valentine’s boxes. There were pink boxes with hearts; red boxes with “Love” printed on the outside; and this being a rural town there was even a hunter’s camouflage valentine box. The boy who sits in the front had a Minecraft themed box. Many of the students had bags of valentines they would be handing out. I could feel a warm excitement among the kids that took me back. I must have had better Valentine’s Days after second grade because the feeling of excitement I felt brought on Déjà vu. I can’t remember details, but the happy anticipation I felt on the bus was a feeling I knew well. It came from the hope of getting a special valentine from some cute little girl I liked or perhaps it was from the anxiety of giving a special valentine to someone I secretly admired. I reveled in the feeling. The morning felt light and happy.

“Are your kids getting on the bus with pretty valentine’s boxes, too?” I radioed one of the other bus drivers who I knew had a load of elementary kids.

“Yes, yes they are,” she responded. She didn’t sound as delighted as I felt. I put this down to her familiarity with the day. She had been driving for over twenty years and had seen as many Valentine’s Days come and go.

That afternoon the kids came running from the school and filed onto the bus. I still felt an excitement among them, but it wasn’t as charming as it was that morning. Most didn’t have their boxes with them now. I suspected they had thrown them away. What they did have with them was a backpack full of valentine candy. The valentines candy I remember from my elementary days included a few heart shaped suckers, maybe a piece of chocolate, and lots of little hearts with “Be Mine” and “True Love” written on them. Times have changed. The kids were eating cupcakes, candy bars, sugar cookies and every other incarnation of sugar you can think of. I commented to another bus driver over the radio, “It’s like Halloween, but pink.”

The kids bounced around the bus like Mexican jumping beans high from the sugar and the excitement. After I parked the blessedly silent bus in the compound I unhooked my seat-belt and turned around to walk my bus. I stopped in astonishment—it was like Valentine’s Day had exploded all over my bus. Candy wrappers were still falling to the floor like colorful snow. Now I knew why the other bus driver was a little reserved about this special day of love.

I grabbed my broom and began the chore of sweeping between and under each seat. I swept all the trash into the middle aisle before making a pass down the aisle toward the front herding the ever growing pile with me. On this day as I looked at the bank of trash down the aisle I thought I might need to get a snow shovel to finish the job. I eventually got the residue of Valentine’s Day out of my bus. It was a lot of work, and I was annoyed that the kids would throw their wrappers on the floor without a second thought. But when I remember the looks on the faces of the kids and remembered the feelings I’ve felt on Valentine’s Day in the past, I find that I’m still looking forward to seeing the colorful boxes next year. I suppose I’m just sentimental.

I was a new bus driver. I suppose every bus driver is at one point or another. I was still trying to find the answer of how to control the kids on my bus. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that you can’t. I learned that keeping order on the bus is more like a marriage—you can’t control your spouse, but you can work with him or her for effective (even spectacular) results.

Anyway, before I learned this there was this eight-year-old boy who I swear would be mistaken for twelve-years-old by any one of you due to his size. In the midst of all the noise on the bus there was a particular agitation about four seats back that always caught my attention. It was Steven. I’m not sure what he was up to to cause such a commotion, but he bothered me greatly. I finally moved him to the front passenger seat to separate him from the others. He wasn’t happy about this—at first.

My problem is that instead making kids hate sitting in the front seat for punishment I end up getting to know them and even liking them. I started talking to Steven and found him to be a lively kid with a lively imagination. In the course of our conversation I told him a story. I can’t remember exactly what it was about, but I’m pretty sure it was just some odd news item. He liked the story, or the way I told it, so much that he asked for another, and then another. The next day he sat in the front seat without being told to. He asked for more stories. Within a couple of days I realized he had decided to move to the front seat permanently.

It became apparent I had created trouble for myself. Steven expected stories every day. And not only him, but some of the other kids learned something was going on in the front of the bus. Soon I could sense three faces poking up over the divider behind my seat to listen to my story. Others leaned toward me from the front passenger seat. It became so distracting that I quit telling stories for a while. The kids eventually scattered back to their regular seats. Steven stayed in the front seat. He really liked talking to me stories or not. When he got off the bus he would turn around, stand there and wave until I finally had to quit waving back and shut the door.

Steven still pesters me for stories every day. After the most chaotic part of the route is done I tell him about the Battle of Bunker Hill, the bear story of Old Ephraim, or how Colonel Bernard Fisher won the Congressional Medal of Honor. What’s interesting is that even though he mostly rides in the afternoon on the way home kids who ride in the morning now move to the front and ask for a story. The morning run is so much quieter than the afternoon that it’s easier to tell a story. Because I have more time I tell the morning kids longer stories. I spent a month telling them, chapter by chapter, the story of Joey and the Magic Map, a novel I wrote.

Every morning it was, “Okay, Tory, tell us more.”

I have to remember where we left off, reformulate the chapter for an oral telling and time it for when I dropthem off. It isn’t easy, but on the country roads with the miles in-between stops I can do it. After Joey I told them The Graveyard Book. Then it was the Secret Benedict Society. Other times I just resort to odd news items again or funny stories from my life.

Sometimes, now, some random kid from the middle of the bus will come plop down in the front seat. This usually happens after the majority of the kids are off the bus and we have the long run to the scattered houses out in the fields. It’s usually someone in fourth or fifth grade who is usually too cool for the front of the bus. It’s often one who I have to call out on the intercom to settle down.

“You got a a story?” he will ask.

I’ll come up with something.

The other day it was little Kaye who suddenly appeared in the passenger seat. She usually resides in the middle of the bus, too. I think she is nine. I call her little, and she is only nine, but I have learned there is a certain sophistication to nine-year-olds.

“Can you tell me a story?” she asked.

There was a wistfulness—a hopefulness—in her voice. I think it was the same kind of voice she uses on her father when she wants something. She hadn’t made the trek up front for a couple of months so her appearance surprised me (and pleased me) a little. We had the eight mile drive out to the dairy and there are no more than ten kids on the bus at this point so it was a good time for a story. I told the first chapter of the Graveyard Book again. She hadn’t heard it yet. She, and a couple of other kids who moved forward when they heard me start, listened intently as I told them about the three-year-old boy who wandered up to the graveyard one night and ended up being raised by the ghosts who lived there. I loved the looks on their faces as I glanced in my mirror.

I’m still driving bus. I know there will be a call for more stories. Some days the stories flow easy. Other days the energy level on the bus is too much to tell a story and I have to tell the asker no. Those are bad days. But after those stormy days the rainbow comes out and a child will appear in the passenger seat and ask casually, like he doesn’t really care, “You got a story?”

And I can answer, “Why yes. Yes I do.”

I have up to eighteen stops on my bus route. Each stop has its own smell, flavor, and color. My second stop, right at 7:00 am, is a buffet of all of the above. Some are waiting at the edge of the road. Others are waiting in parent’s cars because it’s cold out. Others are waiting in their homes from which they come running when I stop. They are neighbors, but not necessarily united. Some are friendly and sit up front to talk with me. One girl always makes a point of giving me a cheery “good morning.” Most of them don’t give me much more than a glance before making their way back into the dark of the bus. I’ve had some dramatics from the kids at this stop when two different families were feuding. There were tears and yelling as a close friendship broke apart. Someone in this group complained to their mother that the bus was cold in the morning. The mother called the district. The district called my boss. Of course the kids don’t wear coats even when it’s below freezing outside. I start the bus twenty minutes before I pick them up. It takes over thirty minutes for the bus to warm up. There’s not much I can do for them. This stop is complicated.

At the fourth stop I pick up a family of four kids. The high schooler and sixth grader never say much, but the second and first grader are always lively. They, a boy and a girl, will stop at my seat to point out the cat crossing the road or the foxes over in the field. They will point out their hideout they are making out of a piece of fencing and a railroad tie. Sometimes their dog Loki is at the stop with them. I’ve seen Lizzie dancing with the dog as I’ve pulled up. I’ve seen Danny feeding weeds to Hercules, their miniature horse. Once after I dropped this family off I went up to the cross roads where I made a 180 degree turn and came back down their road like I always do twice a day. Lizzy was up on the landscaping rock waving at me with both arms. She’s never done that before. I waved happily back and went on my way. It wasn’t until three miles down the road that someone discovered Danny asleep on his seat. Lizzy was trying to let me know Danny hadn’t gotten off. He had to ride another half hour before I could get him home. I radioed the office who called his home to let them know. The fourth stop is always interesting.

Then there is the dairy. The dairy is far out of town up on a hill. There is the big milking barn down lower where I stop the bus. Farther up the hill, about half a mile, are a row of houses. The dairy is family owned and operated. The residents of those houses are related. Even so they all have different last names. There are Sherwoods and Englands and Blackhursts and others. The kids are cousins. I can easily tell which kids are siblings because they look so much alike. Some of the kids are always waiting inside the milking barn where it is warm. They come running out when I pull up. Another group of kids are waiting in a white pickup with their dad. A third group of kids may or may not catch the bus at this stop. They want to catch it, but often they are late and miss the bus. I will sometimes find them waiting at my eighteenth stop with my churchyard kids. Their mom had to drive them eight miles to get them there. When they don’t miss the bus it is usually because I see tail lights pulling out of a driveway far up the hill and decide to wait for them. I’ll watch the headlights guiding a speeding vehicle down the gravel road. A van skids to a stop near the bus and all the doors open and the kids spill out. They will be smiling as they get on the bus and more than one will thank me for waiting.

Just the other day at the dairy an eighth grader got on. He had been waiting in the barn with some other kids. At my seat he leaned down to look out the window and said, “My sister is coming.” I looked back to see a small figure running full speed down the gravel road. She is a first grader and very short in height. I don’t think she comes up to my waist. She ran like the wind through the dim, pre-dawn light to the bus steps. She climbed up breathing and smiling hard. I complimented her on her swiftness. She was proud. I shut the doors to go, but glanced once more over my shoulder. I saw more car lights swinging onto the gravel road from a driveway. Here came someone else. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew it was the bus they were coming to. They were very late, but I didn’t want to make them chase the bus for eight miles so I waited. The car came to a stop beside the bus. I still couldn’t see who it was because the windshield was frosted over. The door opened and, remember the little girl who just ran the half-mile in record time? This was her second-grade sister. A brother and two sisters all arriving at the same stop at different times and in different manners. This stop never gets old.

I’ve already dropped the high schoolers and middle schoolers when I arrive at my eighteenth stop at the church parking lot. As I come the two blocks down the road it usually looks like they are having a party. The fifteen kids are scattered all over engaged in different activities like at recess. When they see me turn the corner they hurry and form a line next to their bags which they placed previously. Sometimes a family of kids is arriving late. They see the bus and start running down the sidewalk ahead of me. It’s a race. I honk my air horn to encourage them. The sun is up when I get to these kids. Their noses are red from the cold. These kids range from kindergarten to fifth grade. They seem homogenous, but they have their differences. I hear about who was mean to who; who said the swear words; and who was bold enough to “butt” (butt in line). And yet they all seem like friends. The little kindergartener with the buzzed head climbs up the steps (not easy for him) and says in a bold, husky voice, “Bus driver! I hope you have the heat on because I’m cooollllddd!” I love him.

The town I drive school bus in is a small town. To an outsider the kids may appear to be the same. After all, how different can you be and still get along in a small town? I suppose there are many similarities and conformities, but if you really can’t see the differences, perhaps it’s because you aren’t their bus driver.

At 5:00 am, when my alarm goes off, the faces of my bus children are already in my mind’s eye. This is strange to me because most of my day has very little to do with the bus. I pick up my first stop at 6:55 am and deliver at the school at 7:55 am. In the afternoon I pick up my first stop at 2:30 pm and drop my last drop at 3:30 pm. That’s basically just two hours of my day. The rest of the day is running my computer repair business, family affairs, and writing. Yet the faces of my bus kids are there in my head.

During the short time we are together on the bus these kids do things or say things that are like pieces to the puzzle of who they are. Over the days, weeks, and months I get a more complete picture (but never complete) of what makes each child tick. There is one, I’ll call him Eddy, who has caught my eye. He is one of a group of about twenty kids who get on at the Church stop and get off at the elementary school which is the very next stop. I have no assigned seats for them since they are on for less than ten minutes. They just clamber to the back of the bus.

Eddy, a second grader, got my attention by misbehaving. Mind you, most of the kids in the back are loud and boisterous, but Eddy always went too far. I would see him climbing over the seats or hanging out the window. More than once he threw trash out the window. What bothered me most was his telling other kids f*&% You and flipping them off. He only did this when he was mad, but he got mad easily. I had seen him get off the bus after I had asked him to quit climbing over the seats and he would flip me off and say his favorite phrase.

Before you picture an ugly bully of a kid let me tell you that he the cutest little second grader you will ever see. He has dark, fuzzy hair; dark eyes; and a warm smile (when he smiles). I turned him in to the principal once when his imperative sentences (f*&% you) got out of hand. The principal already knew him well. He said he would call him in and talk to him although he was already on detention. It wasn’t long before Eddy’s language was making some of the older kids mad at him, so I turned him into the principal again. The principal, who really seems to love his kids, scratched his head. He told me he had talked to the Eddy and his mom. His mom doesn’t have a car. Throwing him off the bus would be throwing him out of school. I saw the problem. Eddy needs school. I didn’t want to get in the way of his possible progress if there was another way.

I moved Eddie and his brother (I’ll call him Shawn) to the front of the bus. I didn’t think for a moment Eddy would quit using his language just because he was up by me, but it would limit who heard him. To my surprise Eddie and Shawn seemed happy to be in front. They often had verbal altercations with the kids in the back. Shawn would tell me stories about the cars he is going to own when he grows up. Eddie was quiet, but when he spoke I heard a sweet, high voice of a typical second grader. Other than his favorite phrase I had never heard him speak before. I didn’t get to know him well, but I started seeing the little boy that he was. Surprisingly I never heard him swear once during the few weeks he was up front. He showed me his Hot Wheels cars and shot me his winning smile more than once.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. Shawn would bully Eddie sometimes when Eddie didn’t do what he wanted. I saw them fight more than once. Usually it was heated wrestling, but once I saw them exchange punches. Eddy won when he bit Shawn on the hand. Shawn, who is much bigger than Eddie, complained that Eddie was acting like a first grader. I was driving during this and by the time I got stopped they were best friends again.

The other day Eddie’s teacher followed Eddie onto the bus after school. She sat with him in the front seat while the other kids boarded. She had a quiet chat with him while he sat with an angry pout on his face. As she left she said,

“I’m sorry. Anything could happen. Anything.”

I wasn’t really sure what she was talking about, but I could guess that she was dealing in the classroom with the behavior I had seen on the bus before I moved him. The next day Shawn got on and told me that Eddie wouldn’t be getting on.

“They threw him out of school. He was kicking chairs over and flipping everyone off.”

I learned Eddie had to complete an anger management class before they will let him back in school. I feel bad for the teacher. I feel bad for Eddie. I feel relieved that a potential problem is off the bus. I feel bad for feeling that way. Life can be so conflicting.

It’s true, I don’t see the kids very long each day, but they still work their way into my life.

School bus drivers have their regular morning and afternoon routes. You pick up and drop off the same kids morning and afternoon every school day. It’s very routine. I find myself looking forward to special activity trips that give me a break from the routine. The special activity trips might be anything from driving the volleyball team to a match to taking the sixth graders to a natural history museum. However, not all activity trips are equal.

An easy activity trip is one that takes you to a place with little traffic and lots of parking space for a bus. I find the majority of activity trips for our school district fit the easy category to one degree or another. I drove to Mt. Pleasant the other day. I was able to drop the team at the front doors of the high school and then drive to the public library where I could do some writing. A couple of hours later I had a bite to eat and then drove back to the school in time to catch the varsity match. It was a pleasant trip.

A few weeks back I had a trip on the other end of the spectrum. I drove the cross country team to a picturesque city up in the mountains for a huge meet. I like driving the cross country team. They are well-mannered kids and are fun to watch run. It was the location that made this such an obnoxious trip.

Another bus driver had told me about her experience a couple of years before. She had dropped the kids at the venue—a place that has absolutely no parking for buses. You are supposed to go park at the high school. The difficulty is that drivers new to this location can’t find the high school. The high school is built in conjunction with a performing arts center and happens to look like the performing arts center, not a high school. She had gotten lost looking for the high school and found herself on the extremely narrow roads on the hillside of this “charming” old mining town. She had a miserable experience.

I have unexpectedly found myself on narrow back roads in a bus, too, and took her warning to heart. I dropped the team off at the venue via a narrow two lane road with two little parking lots just barely big enough to turn a bus around. There would be thirty buses so, of course, no room to park. I went searching for the high school which was supposed to be about a mile up the road. I saw a bus in front of me and decided to follow it hoping that the driver had been here before. I was right that the drive had been here before. I was wrong in assuming he was going to the high school. I followed him into a school complex where I saw eight buses already parked. They were parked nose to tail very closely in a double line, which was unusual, but I thought this must be how they do it here. They I noticed that all the buses were from the same school district—the district of the city I was in. To my horror I realized that I was in the bus pickup line for an elementary school. All those buses were picking up the local students for the afternoon drop. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Local bus drivers are ornery about “other-district” drivers getting in their way. Luckily I was able to pull aside (barely enough room) and get out of the way. There was no way to leave until all the other buses left. Finally I made my escape.

I drove toward town worried that I was going to miss the high school and end up on those narrow mountainside roads. I saw a some buses parked in front of a building that did not look like a high school (it was). The parking lot was full of cars, but there was a curb with enough room for a few buses. I pulled in not caring if it was the high school or not and parked at the curb. Now there would be a four hour wait. It turned out I was only there forty-five minutes before a man came by telling all of us that we had to move our buses somewhere else because they needed this curb for the local shuttle to the meet. Argh! I found room around on the other side of the performing arts center with fourteen other buses parked higgledy-piggledy amid the cars. For such a large meet the planning for transportation was very poor. I usually like to find a good place to watch the kids run and cheer them on, but I couldn’t at this venue. Instead I had to stick around the bus. I read a book, took a nap, and walked around the parking lot for exercise.

After four hours I got a call from one of the coaches. He wanted me to get there fast “and, for heaven’s sake, stay out of the line of buses picking up the teams on that narrow road.” It would take an hour-and-a-half to cycle through that line. He had a fine idea, but how else was I supposed to pick up the team? It seemed the only other alternative was to park on the busy four-lane highway and have them come to me. That was not a viable alternative. As I approached the venue and saw that creeping line of buses I was motivated to find a way to avoid it. I saw a possibility and formulated a plan. The plan required a couple of U-turns that, while not dangerous (if timed right), made me uncomfortable. I ended up parking temporarily on an unused sidewalk with three other buses. I called the coach and the team came to me. Off we went returning home an hour-and-a-half sooner.

The coaches showed a little appreciation for my efforts, but not nearly enough. That is definitely not an activity run I want to do next year. Now I appreciate those small town runs with the quaint little libraries even more. I drop the kids, then find the library and kick back in an overstuffed chair amid shelves crowded with books and walls covered with colorful posters. I can catch the end of the games, meets, or matches and then drive back after an enjoyable afternoon and evening. I will to keep these runs in mind as my “happy place” when I find myself on the next monster run.