students – Celestial Chuckle

Beware School Bus Sneaks and Stowaways!

March 25, 2023John Rolfe

One of the more sobering realities of a gig chock full of sobering realities is our responsibility for every kid who comes aboard our school bus, and that includes the rascals who aren’t supposed to be on there in the first place.

(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.)

Every now and then a driver confronts a stowaway: the kid who tries to hop a ride to a friend’s house without permission from their parents. A bus pass from the school is required for such excursions — my district is starting to require all students to show ID when boarding — but these rogues try to sneak on and sometimes succeed. I’ve had to stop at least one strange face from getting off.

“And where do you think you’re going?” I asked one startled lad as he followed Chumley, one of my regulars, to the bus door after we arrived at Chumley’s house. “Do you have a pass?”

Relieved that I caught him in time, I radioed for instructions and was told he lived right around the corner, but I was to drop him at his house anyway. Fortunately, he just heaved an exasperated sigh and did not jump ugly with me. Drivers I know have had kids tell them to F off before barging out the door and scampering away. One of my regulars managed to scoot out at a friend’s stop and he ignored my pleas to come back. A middle schooler in my district is notorious for randomly riding buses to wherever he pleases.

Guess who will be liable if something happens to these rapscallions?

There are also kids who try to sneak back on to a bus after being booted off. I recently succeeded in getting a seventh-grader removed for constant misbehavior. Hortence Prunella was reassigned to a small bus, one of our Devil’s Island transports for the incorrigible, but one afternoon the assistant principal came aboard mine looking for her. Lo and behold, Hortence Prunella was found hiding in the back amid her usual partners in crime. She’d managed to come on without me spotting her in a thicket of kids. Every day now requires me to be vigilant for her possible return.

SEE: Who’s Who? Losing the Name Game

My after-school activities runs are particularly dicey because I am given only a basic route of main streets but not the names of the ever-changing cast of kids or where they actually live. They often look alike, but after a while I become familiar with some faces. Every so often a kid I’ve never seen before will ride and I’m supposed to let them off wherever they say they are going. Unfortunately for one girl who tried to pull a fast one on her mom, her nefarious plan went awry:

I was hauling my usual cargo of 25 or so kooks one afternoon when my dispatcher’s dulcet tones came over the radio: “Attention all after-school buses. Please check to see if a Beulah Belle Whipsnade is on your bus.”

When I inquired over the PA, a hand shot up in the back. So I reported that I was the lucky contestant who had today’s featured wayfarer on board. “Please drop her off at 2455 Bunkum Boulevard,” I was told.

Beulah was too far away to hear this crucial instruction, which made for a rather nasty surprise … for her.

About 20 minutes later, Beulah made her way to the front and said, “You’re supposed to let me off on Agita Road at Angelina’s house.”

Suspecting that this might be news to my dispatcher, I radioed it in and was told to stand by while a call was placed to Beulah’s mother. A few minutes later, I was told, “Her mother says under no circumstances is she to get off at Agita Road with that girl. She is to be taken home.”

When I relayed this to Beulah, she was hardly pleased and I soon overheard her grumbling to her friends, “The bus driver won’t let me off!”

This moved me to grab my PA and explain, “The bus driver is responsible for everyone’s whereabouts and making sure they get to where they are supposed to go. If you get off somewhere you’re not supposed to be and something bad happens to you, I will be in big trouble. I regret to inform everyone that I am not going to risk my job if I can possibly help it.”

SEE: Rockin’ the School Bus PA

So Beulah, who turned out to be the last one off, ended up sitting in the seat behind me, muttering “How did this happen?” and staring like a con about to go to the electric chair. Apparently her mom was waiting and wasn’t pleased.

I thank my lucky stars that my dispatcher radioed about Beulah, which enabled me to blow the whistle on her, but the close call makes me fret and stew over every passenger. They often come on in a fast-moving crush that makes it hard to take stock. Some ride infrequently, so they don’t seem familiar at first. I’ve called in my suspicion that Beulah was on board and trying to get to Agita Road again. (She wasn’t.) But she does resemble three other girls on my bus.

Kids think we run a taxi service. Gotta watch ’em all like a hawk.

Getting Even: A School Bus Driver Strikes Back

December 28, 2022John Rolfe

I’ll be the first to admit it can take a while for my porch light to come on. But after nearly five years behind the wheel, I have finally realized that kids who raise hades on a school bus are totally unfazed by lectures, write-ups, detentions and suspensions.

These rascals just keep doing what they were seemingly born to do: run around in the aisle, jump over seats, make noise and messes, throw stuff, rough house, pester their fellow passengers, use language that makes Beelzebub blush, and put wrinkles on the forehead of the person responsible for safely hauling them to and from school.

(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.)

Getting urchins to behave is an endless battle and most disciplinary measures fail to keep them disciplined. When the mayhem continues, I’ve found that a classic containment measure — moving offenders up to the front of the bus — only makes for more distraction. With hellions that close, you are much more aware of everything they do. And they will keep doing it. I’ve had fights break out — right behind my shoulder at 45 miles per hour in traffic — between kids I’d just been told by their school to move up.

SEE: Picking Your Battles With Kids

Another classic move, one that’s more effective, is to pull over and simply sit until the hooligans settle down. I explain over the PA that I get paid by the hour, have no particular place to go, and am in no hurry to get there. That can make my precious cargo start policing itself. But what truly curries my goat is when that cargo continues cavorting and raising Holy Hobbes after two, three or four pull-overs.

SEE: Keeping Your Cool

So I figured I needed some new ways to make them realize they will pay a price in aggravation. Inconvenience seems to really bug ’em. I started by taking a page out of my wife’s disciplinary playbook for our kids by quietly dropping the hammer when they think they’ve gotten away with something. For instance, when they get off at school, I give them the trash they left on the floor the day before.

SEE: How I Won the Garbage War

Or I write them up without saying anything, so they have the pleasure of a surprise summons to the principal’s office. But standard punishments only slow them for a day or two. Smedley, an incorrigible sixth-grader on my bus, was finally removed after four write-ups and a five-day suspension … for dousing a girl with Axe body spray, which is apparently the preferred stink bomb of the young miscreants in my district this year.

I have my wish list of things I want (see illustration above), but need realistic, practical tactics. After wracking my brain, here are some I’ve started to use:

Slowing down. Before a trip, I explain that the bus now has new technology: The more people stand up or move in the aisle while we are in motion, the slower the bus goes. Of course, I can only crawl on roads where it is safe to do so, but since I drive in a rural area, there are plenty of ’em and it’s a great way to drag out trips until the kids really want to get home and finally start to act like sane individuals.

Keeping the bad eggs on longer. My after-school run is a general route determined by how many kids are on board and where they live. I am free to improvise, so I will drop the good kids off first and keep the cretins on for as long as possible, often taking the longest way possible to their place of residue. But that depends on how disruptive they are being and how much of their shenanigans I can stomach.

Returning to school. The nuclear option, it requires permission from dispatch. I was told to have an administrator come on board. If all have left for the day, I can tell kids to call their parents for a ride. The first time I tried it, they got a stern warning from a no-nonsense, in-their-face security guard, but shortly after we returned to the road a kid set off a body spray bomb in back, forcing me to pull over. This led to a zesty exchange with the bomb thrower’s sister, who actually said, “Take us home right now! I’m sick of this $#it, you pulling over all time time!”

“You’re sick of it? You’re sick of it?!!!” I replied, absolutely gobsmacked.

She and her fragrant brother were written up with relish and suspended for a week, but the aggravation of that episode reminded me that it really helps me to stay calm and centered if I have a plan of response in advance. Given how limited our options are, fellow drivers in the Facebook group “School Bus Drivers are the Unsung Heroes of the Predawn Light” offered some suggestions:

Lois (Note: drivers’ full names are not used for sake of privacy) recommended what Amazon calls “the world’s loudest whistle.” She said she got one and blew it when her bus got horribly loud. “Then I told them I would hold it up and count to 10,”she wrote. “Before long I only had to hold it up and after a bit they just didn’t get so loud anymore.”

Tyrone cited a driver who pulled into a police station and told the kids she was going to get a cop to come on the bus and yell at them.

Bryan suggested playing horrible music on the radio and turning it louder until the kids cry uncle.

Brian recommended classical tunes — “They will either learn to behave or get an appreciation for classical music” — while Diann recommended blaring oldies or a gospel cd. But the problem I have with music is my boss told us to keep it low so he can hear what kids are saying when he has to review video. I’ve also found that they speak over the music, which only makes the bus unbearably loud.

SEE: Curses! From the Mouths of Babes

Brian had another novel idea I really like: “I’ve told them I would come in during their lunchtime and sit with them and all their friends in the lunchroom so I could ruin their time just like they ruin mine.”

Kids, especially the wisenheimers, get squirrely when they have to talk to you one-on-one. Cristal said that she releases her kids by row so she can confront wrongdoers.

“The kids most likely to cause trouble tend to sit in the back, and the last thing they want to do when they get to school is listen to you,” she wrote. “I will stand up before I open the door so I’m blocking the walk way, and then excuse one row at a time. When I get to the part of the bus that’s giving me the most trouble, I’ll say something like, ‘I don’t much appreciate how you’ve been treating me/my bus/each other, and I feel like you all can do better. Think you guys can make an effort to be better on the bus?’ Then I’ll let them all go for the day. If the behavior continues, I’ll do it again. I’ll do it over and over every day, and I’ll be honest with them.”

Cristal’s persistence reminds me of my wife, who knows that sometimes you just gotta grind ’em down.

Don’t get mad, get even. That’s my new mantra.

Ghosts of School Bus Routes Past

October 29, 2022November 27, 2022John Rolfe

In this job, nothing reminds you of how fast time is flying quite like running into your former precious cargo years down the line.

Five years ago I was a new driver receiving a baptism by fire at the hands of a busload of rowdy intermediate schoolers. Now I’m hauling new batches of equally obstreperous middle schoolers, but it has come as a complete shock to discover some of my former tormentors on my bus again, although they have changed in dramatic ways as kids do in their teen years.

(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.)

One day on my afterschool activities run — a loose route of main drags with stops at cross streets — a lad asked if my bus went to Headcheese Lane. The address sounded familiar although I didn’t recognize the lad. But as we approached his house, suddenly it dawned on me. Lo and behold, it was Jehosaphat the Wanderer!

During the three years I drove him to and from Helga Poppin Intermediate School, I was sorely tempted to staple Jehosaphat to his seat in order to keep him out of the aisle while the bus was in motion. Several write-ups and discussions with his concerned father could not still the lad’s ramblin’ feet.

“Oh, wow!” I cried. “You’re Jehosaphat McCarpetcleaner! I used to drive you!”

“Yeah,” he replied, though he was obviously not interested in talkin’ ’bout the good ol’ days when he had me yanking out my remaining hair in tufts. He’d filled out a lot and his once round face was more chiseled, yet I was tempted to say, “I didn’t recognize you because you were sitting the entire trip!”

Instead, I held my tongue and let him off with a “Have a good day.”

No, that was not what you’d call a tearful reunion. Nor was dropping off Birdie, Daisy and Maude, three lasses who were usually more well-behaved in days of yore. It took me a moment to realize who they were as they’d grown and changed, and I had to remind them of who I was. They responded politely but were not particularly thrilled by seeing their old chauffeur again, which was somewhat deflating as we’d had a cordial relationship. I’d even received several nice notes and cards from them thanking me for my efforts on their behalf. And I’d actually considered including the no-nonsense Maude in my Last Will and Testament as reward for her help reining in the male fools she did not suffer gladly on my bus.

SEE: They Ain’t Making Drivers Like They Used To

I’m happy to say that Oswald remembered me, though I would never have known it was him. As with Jehosaphat, a familiar house and address tipped me off. Once clean cut, earnestly nerdy and eager to prove that he wasn’t a miscreant, Oswald’s face was now buried under a thick mop of long curly hair and he was dressed like a typically cool middle schooler. Though he was hardly chatty or sentimental, I got a kick out of him looking up at me before crossing in front of the bus and giving me one of his old hearty but furtive waves goodbye.

During my Helga Poppin Era (2018-21), my bus was blessed with two lads I was ordered to keep apart because they interacted like two strange bulldogs. Separately, they were more than capable of turning the bus into a maelstrom and giving me writer’s cramp from writing them up.

SEE: The School Bus Justice System

Running into Rollo again after two years was alarming. I noticed a very big kid in the back standing and loudly chatting up girls, some of whom seemed annoyed. And once again, it was the house and address that made me think, “Could it be?”

This kid had a big ol’ head of bushy hair but my first thought was that he was an older sibling of my old nemesis. Nope, it was Rollo, whose immortal deeds included nearly giving me a heart attack when I looked in the overhead mirror and saw him waving a Harry Potter wand with a sharpened end on my crowded bus.

Truly at a loss for words, I let him get off at his house without either of us acknowledging the other. The same with Brutus, who directed me to a new address without ever betraying a hint that he knew me. I will give him this: He was a model passenget the entire trip. There is hope for mankind.

On yet another afterschool journey, I was shocked to see that Guttersnipe, a former hellion-in-training, was now in middle school. When I last saw him, he was a fourth-grade apprentice in the dark arts of stirring the pot and creating trip wires by fastening seat belts across the aisle. No write-up or detention could deter him. He still looked very much the same and had his old eye for the ladies (he typically bothered). I let him off the bus with a shudder.

Some memories are best left to fade into the ether of eternity.

However, one of my former charges is making an effort to never be forgotten. If there has ever been a Bane of My Existence, Robespierre was a strong contender for the honor. Rambunctious, cheeky and uncontainable, he likely set a world record for forcing me to pull over and restore order (which usually lasted five minutes, if that).

SEE: The Roadside Lecture Series Rolls On

In one of my, ahem, prouder and most, ahem, professional, ahem, moments, I’d warned Robespierre not to be “a smart ass” after he sassed me. To his credit, and my everlasting relief, he didn’t go home and tell his parents what his mean old bus driver had said. But despite all of our daily battles, he has retained some warm feelings for his former sparring partner. That became clear one afternoon while I waited outside Bubblefish Middle School as students were being dismissed. I noticed him walking past my bus with Beetlebomb, another charter member of the old wrecking crew.

“Hey, Mr. John!” Robespierre called out. “Do you miss us?”

“Not exactly,” I’d replied drily.

But our recent meeting on the activities bus was more cordial. Once again, he asked if I remembered him.

SEE: Meet the Hellions

“Oh, yes!” I chuckled, but I decided not to let bygones be bygones and not dig up old grievances. “How could I forget? How’s it going? You good?”

He said he was and I was glad to hear it. And although I hardly needed them, he kindly gave me directions to his house (now a fixture in my nightmares). We even shook hands as he departed.

So I have been thinking that while, unlike some of my fellow drivers, I’ve yet to have a former passenger come up to me and tell me that they appreciated me, I’m actually grateful to Robespierre and his rollicking cohorts. Why? Because they taught me how to better handle my current crop of middle schoolers without relying on strong drink, antacids and psychiatric therapy.

SEE: School Bus Life Lessons — Picking Your Battles

I never thought I’d say this, but these reunions, such as they were, made me misty for the good old days. They went by too fast.

School Bus Life Lessons: Teachin’ ’em About Consequences

September 24, 2022September 24, 2022John Rolfe

Correct me if I’m wrong, but school is supposed to be a place of learning. And I am told that a school bus is an extension of the classroom. I drive a school bus. So I assume that makes me a teacher … of sorts.

For the past four-plus years I have been trying to impart a few simple lessons to my passengers, the main one being that actions have consequences. Some of those consequences ain’t always good.

(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.)

Case in point: I frequently tell my precious cargo not to stick their hands out the bus windows while the bus is in motion. “If you value your hand or arm, you might want to know that kids have lost theirs when the bus passed too close to a tree or a pole or another vehicle,” I have said more times than I care to say.

Now, you would think this alarming prospect would make the children think twice.

You would be wrong.

See: School Bus Life Lessons: Picking Your Battles With Kids

Likewise, I tell them not to throw things out the bus windows because, one, littering is illegal and a crummy thing to do and, two, cars around us may swerve to avoid being hit by thrown objects and cause an accident. If you think that alarming prospect would make children think twice, I have a nice suspension bridge that connects Brooklyn (NY) to Manhattan Island that I would love to sell you at cost.

All this brings us to the case of Smedley, a rather rebellious eighth-grader who the other day hit an exacta of sorts. Glancing up into my overhead mirror (where we drivers see so many fascinating things), I noticed Smedley in the back of the bus waving his cell phone near the open window. A glance into one of my side mirrors then revealed a hand holding the phone outside. While stopped to discharge several students, I heard a cry from the back.

“Wait! He dropped his phone in the street!”

Naturally, Smedley and his friends expected me to go fetch the phone or let them off the bus to get it.

They were wrong. Terribly wrong. And horrified when I closed the door and drove off saying over the PA, “There’s are reasons why I’ve been telling you not to stick your hands out the windows! There’s one.”

See: Now Hear This! Rocking the School Bus PA

Of course I had to explain that there were these pesty things called rules, regulations and laws that forbid me from letting students out into traffic or to leave them unattended on a bus. But there was also a principle at work: Actions have consequences.

Several other groups of students have been learning this, the hard way, of late. I am now driving after school activity runs. My route is set but it deposits kids at intersections nearest their homes rather than at their doors. I am not given names and addresses. Therefore, it is up to the kids to tell me when I am getting close to their stops so that I can actually stop and let them off.

You would think that, after a long day, they would be eager to get home.

You would be wrong.

Not a trip has gone by where most of my passengers did not remain silent despite my constant pleas…except, or course, to cry out after I missed their stop. Please note that these cries almost always arose about 20 minutes after I’d sailed by it. They were almost always followed by phone calls to parents with complaints such as, “I’m still on the bus! Yeah! This is longest bus ride ever!”

“The reason this is the longest bus ride ever is because you won’t tell me where you live so I can take you there!” I have replied, many times, over the PA. “I am not a mind reader. If you won’t help me, you will just have to stay on for as long as it takes.”

See: Great Misadventure: A Salute to Relief Drivers

This does not seem to matter.

One pair of middle school girls was too busy dropping F Bombs and making saucy talk to listen to my announcement that I was on their street. Another time, I was left with one silent lad in the very back of the bus.

“And where are you going?” I asked. “Are we playing Guess The Student’s Destination?”

“Hokum Street,” he finally replied.

“It would have been nice if you’d said something while we were on it 20 minutes ago…”

Turns out, he was deliberately trying to stay on the bus. “I don’t want to go home,” he told me. “I did something dumb and got in trouble at school today.”

I didn’t have the stomach to ask what “dumb” meant.

In one epic case, we departed Bubblefish Middle School at 4 p.m. and a journey that should have taken an hour to complete did not end until almost 7 p.m. because two Sphinxes in the back allowed me to pass through their neighborhood and continue for 15 or 20 miles before they finally told me why they were still in the back of the bus after everyone else had gotten off.

And even then all they did at first was mumble.

“What?!” I bellowed in exasperated astonishment. “I can’t hear you! Come up here and tell me where you live!”

And even with that they only came halfway up before taking seats in the middle of the bus and mumbling again.

Thanks to the grace and guidance of the Almighty, I got them home before sunrise. But even using those kids as a cautionary tale has not convinced others that their right to remain silent can and will be used against them.

“If you won’t speak up, I’ll just drive all night,” I say now. “I get paid by the hour. You are going to make me a wealthy man!”

That’s something I’ve learned.