Tag Archives: bus drivers

Bus Driver Diaries: It’s Going to Be Okay

The West Fields route is unique. I have a couple of stops on the west side of the city, and then head out among the farmers’ fields on narrow country roads. The stops are miles apart. Unlike other routes where multiple buses crisscross paths, on out in the West Fields there is only one bus. I like the solitude.

Then there are the kids. I’ve driven the West Fields route for eight years. I’ve watched kids grow from kindergarten to eighth grade. I’ve watched other kids move through elementary school and graduate from high school. The kids on your bus become family. You don’t’ always get along. You don’t always like them. But you are stuck together and you end up caring about each other.

When I got word this summer that I would be changing routes my heart stopped beating for a moment. It was like getting “the call” informing you that someone close to you has died. The thought of being separated from my kids sent a pain through my chest. They were asking me to let go of the West Fields. What would the West Fields be without me? What would I be without the West Fields?

When fourteen year old son heard what route they were asking me to take, he sat straight up in his seat and yelled, “Don’t do it, Dad!” That’s the bus route he rode home on through middle school. He often would skip that bus and wait for my West Fields bus even though it would take him an hour longer to get home. The middle school bus—my new route—has a reputation.

Taking the Middle School route made too much sense. It starts in a small town thirteen miles away from the school. I live in that small town. The first stop is just a half block away from my home. I start at my home in the morning and end at my home at night. The other driver in town moved on and that left me. I made the change.

I’ve driven the route four days now. It’ll be weeks, maybe months, before I build any relationships. Right now it is awkward, like a blind date. I pull up to a stop and open the door. I see a line of young strangers staring up at me. They see a stranger behind the wheel of their bus. Conversation is stilted and difficult. I try to memorize a few names and get them wrong. I turn the wrong direction and have to go around the block. The kids think it’s funny while at the same time being a little impatient—the difficulties of putting up with a new bus driver.

I do miss my West Field kids. I had a line of them waving at me at school as I drove past. It was touching. Strangely enough, even though it’s only been four days, I’m starting to see individuals among those lines of strangers getting on my new route. There’s a sporadic smile, “good morning,” or “thanks for the ride” that catch me off guard. I sense the possibility of being able to love these kids like my West Fields kids. Is that all right? I’m not going to be able to help it.

Just the other morning little seven year old Faith got off the bus at school. Instead of running straight for the school like most kids, she stopped, turned, smiled at me, and waved. Everything is going to be okay.

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These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:

Bus Driver Diaries: Sixth Grade Love

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Most people think that being a school bus driver is difficult because of the children. Perhaps that’s what the new substitute bus driver meant the other day when we were talking. He said, “There’s more to it than I thought.”

It’s true, the children take bus driving from just being the operator of a long, yellow vehicle to something infinitely more complex. At the same time the children take bus driving from something that quickly becomes mundane (like driving a semi), to something infinitely more interesting.

I drive all grade levels on my daily route. You may think that the middle school or high school kids would be the most troublesome. That’s the idea I had in my head when I started. I quickly learned from experience that it’s the grade school kids who try your patience the most. I would be rich if I had a dime for all the times I yell “sit down,” and “get out of the aisle.” And this is with a fairly good set of kids. Ironically, these same grade school kids are also far more fun than the older students.

The other day a little sixth grader named Jonie got on the bus. I say “little” not just because of her age, but also due her short stature. Jonie doesn’t ride all that often. Usually, when she does ride she rides with a couple of her girlfriends. This group of girls naturally separates itself from the boys and sits together toward the front of the bus. On this particular afternoon her friends weren’t with her. Jonie is a social girl, and without her friends she gravitated to the back of the bus with sixth grade classmates, almost all of them boys.

I wasn’t aware of her location until I heard the singing start up—a hearty rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus.” It was so hearty that I found it annoying all the way at the other end of the bus. The kids in the middle of the bus found it so annoying that they put their hands over their ears.

I checked my mirror and saw the familiar group of boys grinning as they sang even louder. This was unusual behavior. They always sit in the back. I’ll hear talking, teasing, and laughing, but never singing. It was then I spied a few wisps of blonde hair sticking up above the seat among the boys. Today they had inspiration.

Joanie has glowing blonde hair and sparkly blue eyes. Her skin is as fair as her hair. Her short height multiplies her cuteness by ten. Although small and pretty, Joanie isn’t prissy. On a field trip last spring I watched her doing backflips on the grass in the park. It was no wonder that with her unexpectedly in their midst the boys were showing off.

The singing continued with “Once There Was a Snowman” and then a belated “Jingle Bells.” Oh, they did sing loud. The younger kids in the middle were miserable. They made everything even more miserable by trying to make there be less noise by making more noise. They appealed to me to make the kids in the back stop singing. I seriously considered it, but when I checked my mirror again the smiles on the faces of the sixth graders were so big that I couldn’t bring myself to kill the fun. It helped that I knew most of the kids would be getting off in three minutes, anyway.

At Happy Stop Number 1 twenty-five kids exited the bus. Each one complained to me on the way out. I felt for them just a little, but what they have put me through in rides past checked my sympathy. At Happy Stop Number 2 another twenty-five students exited the bus. Again, more complaints. I just smiled and waved. Secretly I was as relieved as they were at the now quiet bus.

There were only eight kids left on the bus now. They moved to the front because I don’t like the elementary kids mixing with the high school kids, who I would be picking up next. Four of those left were sixth grade boys. Three of those were guests of one of my regulars. They were going to his house for a sleep over. Joanie was still on and still in the middle of the boys. She was glowing from the attention.

“How did you like our singing?” asked one of the boys.

“It was just like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,” I said.

They smiled at this. I saw them take in a breath to begin again.

“But I think we’ve sung enough for now,” I added. There was no way I could take their enthusiasm so close to the front. They were disappointed for about a second, before they lost themselves in light banter and teasing.

I picked up and dropped the majority of the high school kids before heading out into the country where Jonie and the boys were going. At Jonie’s stop, which was the end of her driveway, her overgrown puppy sat waiting for us. He knew Jonie was getting off, but didn’t know where the door was. The black lab puppy loped along the wrong side of the bus, tail wagging, in search of his girl.

“Watch out,” I said, as Jonie went down the steps. “Your dog is coming.” I had watched before as her puppy, happy to see her, jumped up on her. He’s taller than her when he does that. She has to use karate moves to survive. She took my warning seriously and looked both ways before jumping off the bottom step. That was when her puppy came around the far end of the bus and saw her. She ran, but the puppy easily caught her.

The boys were watching with great interest. When Jonie crossed in front of the bus they all moved in a group from one side of the bus to the other. I heard a window slide down and cheering as Jonie took evasive action. It was no use. The dog’s loving enthusiasm overwhelmed her. In spite of it all she was grinning as she struggled with the puppy. Her hair shone in the afternoon sunlight as did her fair skin. The attention of cheering boys made her glow even more.

She escaped and I started up the road. The boys closed the window and sat down. The scene reminded me of the simple sweetness of sixth grade love. Young crushes from my youth emerged from lost memories. Now that Jonie was gone the bus darkened a little as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. Even so, the glow from the scene still warmed my heart.

I have driven that afternoon route hundreds of times. It has almost become automatic. On cloudy days, when the route seems a little long, the image of the glowing girl and the sound of the cheering boys comes back to my mind and makes my world a little brighter.

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These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:

Bus Driver Diaries — Faces Like Music

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Unlike teachers who spend hours, days, and weeks with the local youth population, school bus drivers only see the kids for a few seconds each day. Although the drive to and from school takes longer than that, we only actually see the kids when they are getting on or off the bus. My contact with each child each day may be short, but in those few seconds I get snapshots of the children’s lives that, while not telling me much, do tell me something.

I took the junior high school run the other afternoon. When I opened the doors, a line of preteens and early-teens streamed in. Awkwardness and angst sloughed off of them like dust from Pigpen in Charley Brown. I had an unexpected flashback to my own junior high days, with all its memories of loneliness and confusion. The face of one boy stood out as he got on the bus—pimples, rough, raw. I saw this face again near the end of the route when I walked to the back of the bus to investigate a spitting incident. A girl reported that this boy had spit out the window. The airflow through the open windows caused the spit to fly back into the next window and onto the girl’s face. I didn’t look forward to confronting him. His face had a large amount of “I couldn’t care less” written all over it. His “I couldn’t care less” expression faded into nervousness as I approached. This gave me hope. We chatted for a moment. I helped him understand what happens when you spit out a window on a bus. He understood there would be greater consequences if he did it again. As I walked away it struck me that he really hadn’t intended to be rude to the girl he accidentally spit on. He just didn’t have a lot of common sense.

Early one Saturday morning the girls’ volleyball team got on the bus. I said “Good morning” to one girl as she passed. She didn’t respond—didn’t even glance my way. I noticed she walked halfway back and took a seat some distance from the other girls. It may have been she wasn’t a morning person. Maybe there was trouble at home or with the other girls. I couldn’t tell. One of the other girls came up to the front of the bus to offer me a muffin. Somehow, within the horizon of her early morning ride, she saw the bus driver. I was touched.

I was dropping a load of elementary kids off at school. One third-grader was dressed in a colorful dress and leggings. As she stepped onto the sidewalk I called out, “That’s a pretty dress.” There were lots of kids filing out right behind her so I didn’t think she would hear. She did. She looked over her shoulder and flashed a happy smile of pure sunshine that warmed me for a week. The last girl off the bus that day wore a blue blanket with a shark-head hood. It looked like her head was in the shark’s mouth. It was cute. As she walked down the aisle I said, “Sharks are not allowed on the bus.” She wasn’t sure if I was seriously scolding her or not. Then I said, “I like your blanket.” She stopped beside me, smiled, and gave a big, happy, sigh.

One day when I was a substitute driver I picked up eight kindergarteners. We drop kindergarteners off at their homes. I had never driven this route and didn’t know where they lived. I asked them for help and they excitedly complied. There were no “drive to the highway and turn left” kind of instructions. Instead I had eight kids calling out, “Drive this way. Then turn that way!” I had to look in the mirror and try to decipher their finger pointing. One little boy adamantly indicated I should go down “this street.” I did. Two other kids overrode his instructions telling me it was the street with the “rocks” on it. It took a moment, but then I realized they meant the gravel road by the edge of the subdivision. I knew where that was. As we approached a pasture with cows they told me to honk. “Our regular bus driver does,” they said. My bus has an air horn. It sounds like a train when you pull the cord. I look for opportunities to use it. I gave it a yank. Eight voices yelled out in unison, “Hello, cows!” And they waved. Heading up the highway I saw three bored-looking horses in a dusty corral. I yanked the cord again and pretended I was a train. The five remaining kids yelled out, again in perfect unison, “Hello, horses.” Once more they waved. I eventually got each child home and watched him or her run happily to the parent waiting in the doorway.

Some cars, not very many, still have radios that are tuned by a dial. If the dial is turned fast, voices and music quickly resolve and then disappear in fragments. A practiced ear can get a sense of what the fragment of sound was about. Being a bus driver is much like turning the radio dial. Instead of sounds, faces flash past giving a momentary glimpse into a child’s day or life. It isn’t much of a glimpse; it is just enough to make me care.

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Now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format: