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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