driving – Celestial Chuckle

School Bus Life Lessons: This Job’s No Joke

April 23, 2022April 23, 2022John Rolfe

Of the many things I’ve learned from driving a school bus, one really stands out: This job can humble you in a heartbeat.

Plenty of things can go wrong. Many are not the driver’s fault, but some are, like getting lost in thought and missing a stop.

SEE: Zoning Out Is Not the Way to Go

Or losing your cool with kids. Or doing something silly and looking like a fool. I know all about that one.

You see, ever since I was a kid I’ve had a mischievous streak a mile wide, so I have a devil of a time resisting the temptation to do things like making, shall we say, offbeat remarks over the two-way radio.

(This blog is based on actual events, though names, places and some personal details have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty and avoid libel suits.)

I hear playful banter between drivers all the time, but I started cracking wise after I heard their announcements while they were backing out of their parking spaces in our compound. The mischief wheels in my mind immediately started spinning and one day I just blurted, “For your entertainment pleasure, 631 is backing out of space 90.”

I immediately felt ashamed of myself, but when no one said anything to me, I kept going.

A stream of similar messages followed. Stuff like: “631 backing up and bound for glory” and “631 backing up . . . but not indefinitely. I hope to stop at some point.”

I was also inspired by another driver who, when asked by our dispatcher how many kids he had on board, replied, “I don’t know. I’d say somewhere between seven and nine.” So I began commenting about the challenges of the job: “631 backing out of space 90 to suffer the little children.”

I’ve been told by some of my fellow drivers that they get a kick out of my announcements and even listen for them. Of course, that only eggs me on, increasing the urge to turn my bus into my own personal comedy club. As it is, I say bizarre things over the PA, such as informing kids who are complaining about someone’s rather noticeable fart that state law requires at least one such emission per trip so the bus does not run out of gas.

SEE: School Bus Life’s a Gas

These vocal gateway drugs led to drawings and messages in the dust on the back door of my bus.

But I’ve learned the hard way that it helps to remember that humor, like beauty, is in the eye (and ear) of the beerholder. Not everyone finds me amusing and they’ve let me know by erasing my dust messages or scrawling, “Wash your bus!” over them.

Even worse, it’s usually after I’ve said something goofy that I immediately do something embarrassing — like missing a turn, having to go miles out of my way, and arriving late at a school. Or a discipline situation arises, my video is pulled, and I end up under a microscope. I’ve been told that some school officials will watch the video of an entire trip and not just the incident in question in order to make sure the driver is not somehow at fault. So I’ve sweated out a few reviews.

SEE: The School Bus Camera’s Eyes Have Seen It All

The problem with trying to be a comedian is you can be a very conscientious driver but joking makes you sound like your mind is elsewhere and you don’t take the job seriously. This is a job that demands concentration and must be taken seriously. Plus you clutter the radio with inane chatter when drivers and the dispatcher need everything on it to be important, clear, concise, and not a distraction.

I’ve been left red-faced by our dispatcher saying, “We don’t need to hear this!” while I merrily prattled during a busy time on the radio. After I declared that it was “Time for today’s exciting episode of Assigned Seat Roulette, so let’s meet today’s contestants!” I was curtly and coldly informed by our former head mechanic that everyone, including the big bosses, can hear me and there is a very real need to remain strictly professional.

Gulp.

Clearly, I need to engage my brain before I put my mouth in “drive.”

You’d think I would have learned my lesson after four years behind the wheel. But you would be wrong. I’ve been chastened, and I’m very careful about picking my spots and not becoming an annoyance. But when volunteering to help out with after-school runs even though I tend to not know the routes (with predictable results), I’ll still say whatever pops into my head, such as: “631 to base. My luxury vehicle is empty and available for misguided tours of Greater New England” or “Bus 631 is now available for salvage operations, birthdays, bar mitzvahs and other social events.”

SEE: Great Misadventure: A Salute to Relief Drivers

I really do have to be very careful about letting my inner child out. This is a job that requires a responsible adult and it will quickly remind me when I am not being one.

Great Misadventure: A Salute to Relief Drivers

January 15, 2022January 28, 2022John Rolfe

There’s a reason why bus drivers in my district are asked to do a dry run of new routes before school opens. Some of us (mainly, me) are unfamiliar with much of the area we service and we need to familiarize ourselves with its highways and byways lest we go horribly astray.

I live 40 minutes away from my district, and for my first three years I drove regular, unchanging runs. But because of the driver shortage, I’m now being pressed into service on short notice, handed a run sheet (or just some general directions I quickly forget) for a totally strange route, and told, “Good luck and Godspeed.”

Now, some drivers (we call them “floaters” or relief drivers) do this kind of thing every day. They know the turf down to the last blade of grass and can tackle a route, any route, without advance warning, no freaking sweat. I marvel at how they got to that point.

(This blog is based on actual events, though names, places and some personal details have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty and avoid libel suits.)

Just before the 2021 holiday season, I was assigned an afterschool run out of Runnynose Elementary, hauling 30 or so kindergarten-through-third graders. I didn’t know the route, but I thankfully had a run sheet because kids that young are rarely of help in finding your way to their homes.

SEE: Unreliable Sources: Directions and School Bus Tall Tales

The bus was barely loaded when a little girl declared she had to use the bathroom.

Fortunately, a teacher was on hand, checking on a lad who was in tears because his beloved regular bus driver had been replaced by my grizzled, forbidding presence. After the young lass returned from the pissoir, we pulled out of the parking lot only to have another girl declare that she, too, had to use the facilities. Now.

I started to ask her how far away her stop was but realized that was a waste of time. She naturally insisted that her back teeth were floating. So I radioed to base that I was returning to the school … but not until after I mistook the two-way mic for the interior PA and assured every bus driver in the district that they could make a wee-wee if they wanted.

“No thanks, I don’t have to go,” one replied.

Apparently kids are required by law to load up at the water fountain before boarding a school bus. I used to get bawled out by the security guard at Our Lady of Dismay Elementary for bringing my precious cargo back to let it do its business, so returning to Runnynose was likely to be an act of raw courage.

SEE: School Bus Life’s a Gas

No sooner did we pull up to the school’s front door than half the bus declared that they, too, had to tinkle. The teacher was stunned by the lengthy procession, which took a good 15 minutes to complete its ablutions.

“Water is either going in or coming out of kids,” I told her with an ingratiating smile and chuckle, though she wasn’t amused.

Expected to leave at 3:30, we finally pulled away at 4. The ride was chaos from the get-go. Despite my constant orders to sit down, urchins kept coming up the aisle to ask questions and report on crimes in progress.

SEE: It Only Takes One to Drive a School Bus Wild

“Fescue is choking my brother,” one somber lad informed me, only to return moments later and say, “Fescue is hitting everyone with a seat belt.”

So I grabbed the PA and ordered Fescue to the Honored Student Seat in the front of the bus. He replied that he’d be there as soon as he established a Wi-Fi connection. “What’s the password?” he asked.

SEE: Crowd Control Measures I’d Like to See

The quickly setting sun left me squinting in the glare of oncoming headlights as I tried to read my run sheet and street signs. Sometimes there were none, or no numbers on houses. Kids kept screaming that I was going the wrong way or had passed their houses. I kept messing up turns. Other drivers kept radioing me with directions. The dispatcher kept inquiring about my ETA to various destinations.

“When do you think you’ll complete your run?” he finally asked.

All I could honestly say was, “I’ll have them all home for Christmas if only in their dreams.”

Two kids (one of them Fescue, of course) didn’t get off at their stop, forcing me to stop several turns later and try to figure out how to retrace my path in a dark, unfamiliar neighborhood. I was hopelessly confused, soaking in flop sweat, and sitting at an intersection when the dispatcher radioed to tell me parents were trying to find me.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“From what I can tell, I’m at the corner of Surrender and Quitting,” I replied.

SEE: Bus Driver’s Wish: A Fraction of Distraction

Fortunately, the parents in question drove up moments later though the mother was less than pleased with the course of events (and my bus) that evening.

I was then left alone with Fescue, who had taken the seat directly behind me. Our conversation went like this:

“I’m hungry,” he said several times.

“I’m hungry, too,” I finally replied.

“What if I don’t get home?”

“You’ll get home.”

“But what if I don’t?”

“You will.”

“But what if I don’t?”

“I’ve been driving a bus for almost four years and I’ve never failed to get a kid home.”

“Are we going to spend the night on the bus?”

“No.”

“But what if we do? Do you have a blanket?”

“We’re not going to spend the night on the bus.”

“Everyone else got home safely. How come?”

“Because you are the last stop. You’ll get home safely.”

“But what if I don’t?”

“You will.”

“What if we have an accident?”

“I’ve never had an accident and I’m not going to start now.”

“But what if we do and I don’t get home?

“You’re going to get home!”

“But what if I don’t?”

“Kid, I will get you home if it kills me!”

I finally did get him home, and I lived to tell, but not until after I’d made a wrong turn that took me all the way to the town of Fishmeal, about 15 miles from where I needed to go. Thankfully, Fescue’s parents were understanding even though their dear son was two hours late.

When I returned to base, I discovered that the back of my bus was a riot of crumbs, wrappers and other trash. I worried that I would be locked in the yard while I fueled and cleaned up and went to the wee-wee room in the drivers trailer. That would have been a most fitting end to the day.

SEE: How I Won the Garbage War

So I tip my hat to relief drivers who fly by the seat of their pants with skill and steely resolve without letting neither snow nor pee nor gloom of night prevent them from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. How they achieved that state of grace could not have been easy.

As my Sainted Mother used to tell me, “You only learn by bitter experience.”

I’m getting plenty of that these days.

Unreliable Sources: Directions and School Bus Tall Tales

October 23, 2021John Rolfe

One of the charming things about our precious cargo, is that they often want to assist us in our daily rounds.

Lifting the rear door handle or pushing a button to deactivate the bus alarm after arriving at school is seen as a great privilege by the younger ones. Beetlebomb, one of my noisiest and most “active” fifth-graders, redeems himself by informing me whenever I’ve left my flashing amber lights on. Other kids happily serve as spies for the sake of maintaining discipline.

See: The Rat Patrol

(This blog is based on actual events, though names, places and some personal details have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty and avoid libel suits.)

Of course, there are times you need them to help and they can’t, especially wide-eyed kindergartners who stare or shrug when you need directions and ask them where they live. Sometimes even older kids can’t tell you.

One day a teacher brought a sixth-grader to my bus and said, “He doesn’t know where he’s going. Let me give you his address. He doesn’t speak any English.”

Oh, goody.

I at least knew the way, but he had to get off at the end of a street I couldn’t go down and just walked away. Naturally, the next morning he wasn’t at his stop. I can only assume he got home.

“If he didn’t, you probably would have heard by now,” my wife says.

But I’ve learned (the hard way) to be skeptical of the information my passengers provide.

For instance:

They’ll say someone isn’t on the bus and then yell that they are … as soon as I’ve passed or pulled away from the kid’s stop. Beetlebomb, who seems to be up on everyone’s business, tells me when someone won’t be needing a ride on any given day. Sometimes he’s right.

“He went in early for chess club,” he’ll say as we approach Hobbestweedle’s house in the morning. But one day he claimed that Hobbestweedle had a dentist appointment and it turned out that he was merely late getting down his long, winding driveway to our pickup point. The lad was left behind to his mother’s, and my, dismay.

Live and learn … to take anything you are told with a grain of sodium chloride. Which is why I didn’t freak out the morning Brutus and Robespierre yelled from the back, “Hey, Mr. John! Beetlebomb is dead!”

“Well, that will keep him quiet until we get to school,” I cooly replied over the PA.

See: Now Hear This — Rocking the School Bus PA

Those kids, they’re always joking.

The Big Three: Robespierre, Beetlebomb and Brutus

The infamous Robespierre, one of the most rambunctious of intermediate school hellions, got everyone’s hopes up when he announced that he was moving to Arizona. I thought it was too good to be true, but when was gone for a few days I dared to believe though I wondered why our router hadn’t told me he’d been taken off my run sheet.

Then Robespierre showed up one morning with a big grin on his face and turned the grin on mine upside down.

Like Charlie Brown convinced that Lucy will actually let him kick the football, I also bought into Brutus (one of Robespierre’s partners in crime) informing me one Friday afternoon, “This is my last trip on your bus.”

“I’m sure you’ll make it a memorable one,” I said.

“I’ll be taking another one. My mom says you get me home too late.”

“Did you tell her that might be because you keep forcing me to pull over and make you sit down and be quiet?” I asked with a flinty squint.

See: The Roadside Lectures Roll On

Lo and behold come Monday morning Brutus wasn’t on and I rejoiced.

Turned out he was only riding in the afternoons. I thought I’d have a good cry but there was an unexpected blessing: Rollo, yet another rider of ill repute, was removed from my bus and assigned to a small one after repeated scrapes with Brutus and others.

A few days later I learned from Rollo’s new driver that Brutus was being added in the afternoon. Apparently, his mom had prevailed in her request to have her dear, sweet son delivered to her door more promptly.

I could only chortle at the thought of how thrilled Ol’ Brutus would be to find out he’s been reunited with his nemesis Rollo (I had to keep them separated) and that he will actually be getting home later because Rollo’s stop adds time to the new driver’s run.

I must confess that sometimes I can’t resist turning the tables, like when I had my riotously flatlulent middle schoolers convinced that state law requires at least one fart on the bus per trip.

See: School Bus Life’s a Gas

One morning after my “lively” crew was surprisingly quiet, I told them over the PA as we pulled up to Helga Poppin Intermediate School, “Hey, great ride today, people! I didn’t have to call in the National Guard or change anyone’s seat!”

“He’s pranking us!” I head someone say.

“It’s April Fool’s Day!”

It wasn’t and I wasn’t. Truth is, there are times when I can use the Guard’s help. Maybe some of my well-behaved riders will enlist some day.

The School Bus Slayer Strikes Again

February 13, 2021John Rolfe

It’s said that you never forget your first. That’s true in this noble profession. Many drivers remain fond of the first school bus they drove and I’m no different.

Mine was an International 40-footer with 103,000 miles on it. I called it Tarkus, after the half-tank, half-armadillo creature on the cover of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s classic album of the same name. It was a fitting moniker. The engine roared and the bus rumbled along like it was on tank treads.

(This blog is based on actual events, though names, places and some personal details have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty and avoid libel suits.)

Tarkus was a rustic vehicle to say the least. Besides the rust patches and frayed, duct-taped seats (kids enjoyed pulling stuffing out of the holes), the heat barely worked and the PA didn’t. But I adapted as I navigated my way through a (very) challenging first year of driving that included brake failure, a boil-over breakdown, a scrape with a rock wall while squeezing past a tree crew, and dinging two buses while entering or leaving my parking space at our compound.

See: Five Days That Made Me What I Am

“Are you trying to kill all our buses?” our dispatcher finally asked me one morning when I radioed in that Tarkus had failed to start after I’d dropped my precious cargo at Bubblefish Middle School.

Good question.

Even after a new starter was installed, Tarkus again failed during my first wait for afternoon dismissal at Bubblefish. I was just sitting there with the engine off when a beeping started and the alarm sounded. Vexed, I radioed for help and a mechanic came out out but couldn’t start the bus.

“What a day,” I texted to my wife. “My bus died twice, once in the morning and then in the afternoon after they fixed it.”

“Well, aren’t you glad it was the bus and not you?” she replied.

Well, yes.

Apparently, either Tarkus was haunted or I was. Its flashers would suddenly come on, the stop arms would swing out, the front crossing gate would open, and the beeper would sound with the emergency switches off, all for no apparent reason.

Tarkus was constantly in and out of the garage, leaving me feeling guilty about increasing the workload on our small crew of intrepid, overworked mechanics.

Sadly, after little more than a school year behind the wheel, I was finally switched to Tarkus II … because a parent called to complain that her son had arrived at school encased in ice after a particularly frigid ride. (The “heat” usually took about 45 minutes to reach lukewarm, where it stayed, defying repeated efforts to improve it and inspiring me to suggest that a wood-burning stove be installed.)

The original Tarkus had its shortcomings.

Tarkus II was another International with about 100,000 hard-fought miles on it. The heat was a lot better, but the bus refused to start twice, once after more than a week in the shop for that same problem. While it was laid up, I was given a substitute bus and sure enough a dashboard light resembling a mushroom cloud came on during my first run.

“The engine is having a meltdown!” I cried over the radio.

It turned out that it was only a problem with the exhaust system, but for good measure that bus soon developed an air brake leak.

“You’re breaking all the buses!” our head mechanic groused as I left my big yellow victim in front of the garage.

Tarkus II was soon deemed unreliable, so I was given Tarkus III, yet another International with 94,000 miles on it.

“I feel sorry for it,” one of my fellow drivers said as I headed out to it for my first run. “I don’t know how it will survive you.”

Naturally, it wasn’t long before the beeper, engine light and “low coolant level” message came on as I left the compound for a morning run, forcing me to limp back to the garage.

“You’re killing all our buses!” my boss yelled as I schlepped out to the yard and yet another vehicle.

My original Tarkus has sadly gone to the Great Bus Graveyard in the Sky. Meanwhile, Tarkus III and the rest of our fleet quakes in fear when it hears me coming.