This is my second year driving a school bus. I’ve looked over all the posts I made during my first year and realize that the honeymoon is over. My first year’s posts are true to my experience, but they were written with a certain amount of naiveté. I was new to the kids. The kids were new to me. I saw the best in them. They saw a “nice” bus driver in me. That’s all changed now (wry smile). Every weekday morning at 7:00 am the doors hiss open to let the same kids on to ride the same thirty mile route with the same eighteen stops on the way to the same school. Every afternoon at 2:30 pm we do it again, but going the other direction. I think what the kids and I look forward to most are the days that we don’t have to do this. Last Monday another bus driver told me it’s “a week and two days to Thanksgiving break.” I’ve only driven a year and I find myself yearning for the next break. It all may be routine now, but I still rebel against the mundane.

In the afternoons while waiting for the elementary school bell to ring I stand outside the bus and juggle. My third son inspired me to learn. I have seen him juggle five items successfully. I can just manage three items. Since the beginning of the school year I have been working on juggling three items with one hand. I don’t have it yet, but it is coming—maybe by the end of school next year. I don’t do this to entertain the kids, but to develop myself and to keep my mind off all the energy that is coming my way in a few minutes. The kids have seen me, though, and think it’s great.

The afternoons are difficult because the bus is just sitting there while I wait for all the kids to make their way to the bus. It takes about ten minutes. It’s a very long ten minutes because when the bus is not moving and the engine not running the kids want to use the bus as a playground. It takes a lot of energy on my part to keep the kids from reaching critical mass which precedes a runaway nuclear reaction. The bus right next to mine is supposed to wait for me to leave the loading zone first. If I haven’t moved by the time she is ready she will pull forward a few feet to let me know she is getting impatient. The last few afternoons I have watched the clock more closely and started a countdown with my kids at thirty seconds. Most aren’t paying attention at first, but as the kids up front pick up the count it gradually spreads to the back and we all get the 10, 9, 8, 7 . . . together. I have the bus in gear and the parking brake off so that when we get to “0” we begin to roll and all the kids cheer.

I started naming the stops and calling them out over the intercom when we approach like on a subway.

“Next stop Lucky Hill,” I call. It’s actually Turkey Hill, but it’s the first stop and the kids getting off the crowded, noisy bus are lucky.

At the third stop I call out, “Grand Central Station.” This is the stop where up to twenty-five kids will get off.

There is Cameron Corner and Peyton Place both named after kids getting off there. One of my favorites is the very last house on the route when there is only one little gal on the bus. I look in my mirror, but can’t see her. I know she’s back there somewhere behind one of those tall seats. “Jaida Junction,” I announce. I stop and see her appear from halfway back. “Thank you,” she sings out without looking at me as she plunks down each step and she’s off. The bus is now empty.

Quite late into the year I handed out the “Bus Rules” papers that require parent’s signatures. How likely is it that a bus driver can hand a paper to students and expect to get them back? Every week I sweep up a considerable amount of “thrown away” homework papers from the bus floor. One bus driver told me she offered candy to those who bring them back. I handed out the sheets as students got off at each stop. They rolled their eyes unenthusiastically as I made them wait to get their copy. I told them there would be a reward if they brought them back. I heard a third grader talking behind me about how the reward would probably be a just a fun size candy bar. It was just after Halloween. He didn’t sound motivated. I decided to take out a loan and buy full-size Hershey bars to raise the motivation factor. The next morning about a third of the kids brought their papers back. My gamble worked. Their eyes lit up when they were able to pull a full-size Hershey Bar out of the container. The other kids were hitting themselves on the forehead for not bringing theirs. I heard a lot of bargaining in the dark behind me, “I’ll give you a quarter for a bite.” Those papers kept coming in all week and I made sure I had candy bars ready.

The problem is now that the kids are expecting me to have full-size candy bars all the time. I’ve learned that it isn’t such a problem—it’s actually useful and fun. Isaiah, an eighth grader who looks like life has been weighing a little heavy on him lately, got off at second-to-last stop. As he passed me he said, “Do you think I could have a candy bar just for being me, today?” I gave him one. As we pulled onto the gravel road that leads to the dairy an eight-year-old girl saw her family van coming down the road to the dairy from the other direction.

“That’s my mom,” she said with a proud smile. “I called her and she is going to give me a ride home today. Usually she won’t do that.”

This girl, her siblings and cousins, usually have to walk a half mile from the dairy up a hill to where their homes are. After she got off the bus I called her back to the driver’s window and handed her a candy bar. “This is for your mom,” I said. “She deserves one.” Instead of being disappointed that the candy bar wasn’t for her she smiled brightly at the prospect of handing this over to her mom.

Tomorrow morning at 7:00 am I’ll be opening the door at that first stop. I’m not looking forward to it. The kids won’t be any more excited about it than I am. I am determined that somewhere in the AM or PM run I will find some fun. Maybe someone will need a candy bar. Maybe I’ll finally juggle three items with one hand. One of the kids might come to the front and ask me to tell them a story on that long stretch out in the country. I might get one of the high school kids to smile. I refuse to surrender to the mundane.