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School Bus Saga
Aug 27 2007 by Emily Hansen
8/27/2007
All Hail the Bus Driver
I have lots of memories of the school bus from my childhood. I lived in a neighborhood where I could walk to elementary school every day, which caused me to suffer from a disorder I call Partridge Family Syndrome (for my pop-culture-challenged friends, check it out here). I desperately wanted to ride the big yellow bus and gazed with envy every time one passed. In my mind, that school bus was just like the psychedelically colored bus from "The Partridge Family." I don't think they ever showed the interior of the Partridge bus, but I was sure it was decked out with a drum set, a super-cush couch and all the soda I could drink (I dreamed big then, huh?).
That vision was obviously shattered the first time I got on the school bus in seventh grade. The cranky driver and rowdy kids in back (Me? No, that wasn't me...) were stuff made more for nightmares than dreams of David Cassidy. OK, fine, so it really was all about the boy, not the bus.
I hadn't thought about my bus fantasy for years until my oldest child went off to kindergarten. At that point my perspective had obviously changed; the crabby bus driver of my youth became the cautious, take-no-crap, make-order-out-of-chaos hero of my parental world. This person gets my kids to school safely and has the grand opportunity to be the first adult outside of mom and dad to impact my children positively every day. I have a huge amount of respect for those who take that responsibility seriously.
Unfortunately, I think many people haven't had this "respect the yellow" epiphany. At least once a week I see someone blow by a bus's stop sign or grow too impatient to continue to wait for the lights to stop flashing and the sign to lay flat. Have these people lost their minds? Are they really in so big a hurry they can't wait a few minutes for the kids to get on or off the bus?
"Back to school" is upon us, so please watch out for the big yellow bus. Do some deep breathing if that five-minute wait really stresses you out, and, most of all, channel your inner rule-follower. Then get over your punk-like ways and find some time to thank a bus driver for doing a job that often gets the bird instead of the respect it deserves.
