A coworker was talking about one of his most hated school bus drivers. Among her faults, she was very, very slow, especially when there was snow on the ground. She would drive no faster than 20, ever, even if the road was clear of snow. Even when the road was dry she’d drive very slow. He told me that it took him over two hours to get home after school (he only lived a few miles away). Often times these delays were not caused as much by her slow driving as the fact that she always told the riders that she would drive back to the school and start the route over if anyone talked, even so much as a whisper. After awhile parents complained that their kids were getting home so late and this driver was eventually fired once it was found out that she had been taking them back to the school over and over.
My own worst school bus driver, who I had for part of my seventh grade year, wasn’t this bad, but she still drove agonizingly agonizingly slow. She would not pull over to let cars backed up behind her go around (which was to our advantage as this would have delayed our getting home even more). She also had a very strict talking policy, but would at least let us converse quietly. She had assigned seating and had everyone cram three to a seat, leaving the back third of the bus vacant. I was so glad when she changed routes and we got a decent bus driver.
So, anyone else have any good or bad school bus or bus driver memories to share?
By 7th grade we were used to raising an unholy rucus on the bus. That year, the bus driver was a 200lb African American lady, who much to our shock had decided she wasn’t going to take alot of crap from a bunch a smart assed white kids and got solid control by assigning us seats and yelling at us. Basically she threatened us, implicitly (or so it seemed to a bunch of 12 year olds) and explicitly.
No bus driver hitherto EVER had the guts to do with us little princes and princesses.
One day, our bus broke down, this was like October after about 6 weeks of the rule of terror. She had to call back up but it was a long time before it came. We sat together for 4-5 hours, waiting for it sharing fear, stories, laughing about it. Of course from that day on we all became great friends. We’d pretend try to get over on her, she’d catch us pretend to be mad, we’d all laff. We loved her and I THINK she was fond of us. She did many fun things like: The last day of school she let each kid say something thru the loudspeaker mike on the bus.
Never saw her after those 10 months, but never forgot her either.
I remember a funny bus memory. Our bus was pretty raucous in the mornings, and we always had fairly cool drivers who just let us yammer on. One morning however we heard the opening chords of “Beat It” come on the radio and slowly everyone on the bus started to realise there was something different about it. By the end of the first couple of lines (turned out to be the first local airing of Weird Al’s “Eat It” of course) everyone had sushed each other and the bus was quiet as a tomb as everyone absorbed every deliciously sacriligous line; we were afraid to even laugh in case we missed anything. When the song finally ended it was absolute chaos of everyone screaming and roaring with laughter and joyous delight. We talked about it the whole way to school, pretty much all day IN school and all the way home. We were totally in awe of “the man who dared to spoof Michael Jackson.” I wonder how many of the other kids ran out that weekend and spent their allowance on In 3-D like my brother and I did? That’s my one memory of a school bus ever being quiet!