Inspired by this thread by Bosda.
I was just wondering what sort of crazy stuff your school bus driver did.
Once during the am rush hour traffic, we were cruising down a main road with heavy traffic and the speed limit there was 45. Suddenly the bus driver slammed on the brakes and came to a complete stop in the left lane. He jumps outside and comes back in proudly holding a screwdriver he had spotted on the street.
Now you may be thinking that he removed a hazard from the road and throwing thirty school to the floor was a small price to pay but you should know that as he retook his seat he chuckled and said “Free screwdriver!”
So, what did your bus driver do that was less than sane.
According to my sister, one her school bus drivers once went so far as to tie up an unruly kid for his repeated misbehavior and put tape over his mouth. This was back in the late 70s or early 80s. An incident like this nowadays would likely cause a bus driver to lose his or her job.
This driver was an old lady who drove slowly, so slowly in fact, that she sometimes made kids late for school, forcing them to incur tardies. Needless to say, everyone hated her. She made everyone sit as close to the front as possible, three to a seat, leaving about a fourth of the backmost seats empty.
Our bus driver never came to a complete stop when picking us up. She would slow down and open the doors and roll about 30 feet and if you hadn’t made it in by then you waited for the late bus. She also wore those crazy plastic funky sunglasses you get for a buck at the store and played her radio very loudly so she could pretend that there was no chaos on her bus.
I had to ride a lot of buses as a kid, so I have a tale or two to tell!
When I was in grade 2 or 3 our bus had to go over a set of railway tracks. One day the arms were going up and down randomly. So my bus driver waited for about 5 minutes and ran the gauntlet. Well he made it past the first, and the second one went down infront of him. So he stoped. Then the first arm slammed down on the top of the bus. He was swearing-up a storm. We finally made it through.
I had another bus driver in high school, who I swear could not shift. He would put the bus in “half-gear” and all you would hear was a loud “GGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR CLUNK!” as the gear fell into place. In unison a bunch of us would yell out “If you can’t find it, grind it!”. One time we counted, no shit we got to 22 “Steamships” and the gear finally popped in!
I’ve had a few good ones. There was the guy who had an 8-track and would take requests from the kids. I seem to recall the Beach Boys being a big favorite.
We also had the crankiest SOB ever. This old guy had maybe 2-3 teeth left in his head and used to bellow “sit down and shut up or I’m turning this bus around!”. Oddly enough he never did, but more than once he would pull over to the side of the road and not move until it was dead quiet.
We used to go through a pretty rural route and once in a while, if the bus got too noisy, the driver pulled over, made everyone get off then back on again. For some reason, we were usually quieter then.
I had the greatest bus driver ever in 6th grade. I was going to a private school in another town, and there were only a few other kids on this bus. The guy, named Jose, never learned the route. He was constantly waving his arms around, looking in the rearview mirror, and going “which way, kids, which way?” at intersections. We all thought it was great fun. Hmm, thinking about it now though, I suppose he must’ve been faking it to entertain us.
He’d also let us move around the bus at will, and while we were in the aisle would do his best to make us fall over (slam on the brakes, make a sudden turn, drive over a curb). In one case, he drove over a sidewalk going rather quickly, and the kid sitting just over the rear wheel well was literally thrown from one side of the bus to the other. No one ever got hurt (seriously, anyway), and the bus ride was my favorite part of the school day.
Of course, we’d often arrive home with our spiffy little uniforms covered in dirt and grease from the floor and underside of the seats, and have to make up some kind of story to explain what happened (we were all terrified that Jose would get fired). Occasionally some little whiner on the bus would complain to his parents, and Jose would have to take it easy for a few days. But things always started up shortly thereafter.
Our bus driver never slowed down for this one curve in the road. Every day for 4 years I was convienced that we were going to go into the ditch. One day we did. We had to wait for another bus to come get us and take us off to school.
At our school, if you were late because of the bus, you were not counted as tardy.
He would let us smoke in the back of the bus, if we gave him a cigarette to smoke too. We basically had a smoking and non-smoking section. The back of the bus was a gray haze.
Good: My eighth grade bus driver, Ms. Mosely, would chase the ice cream truck down, get it to stop, take our money and orders and buy us all ice cream. We would also have occasional pizza parties.
Bad: My friend Netta was sick one day, and she threw up on the bus. The bus driver poured that woodchip absorbent stuff on the puddle, and then didn’t clean it up. He expected Netta, who was out of school for three or four days because she was so sick, to clean it up when she got back. Another girl who rode the bus and I complained to the principal, and he was fired. And had to clean up the bus.
My elementary school bus driver would keep us in line by regularly scheduling paper ball fights. About once every few weeks on the way home, if we had been good, he’d pull over in a neighborhood and let us have at it for a few minutes. Pretty awesome for a bunch of kids and we’d help him clean up at the end.
Alas, the regular substitute bus driver was terrified of children. Once, the emergency alarm was triggered when the kids in back were messing with the door. The door itself did not open and this was at a stop. The driver called the police, saying we had all physically threatened her. So, the officers came and badgered the entire lot of us, saying how we were such mean kids to the nice bus driver (who would pitch a fit at you if you even shifted in your seat) & that we should all be in jail (really. this was not childish hyperbole.).
Somehow, an arrangement was made so that staying on the bus and being taken home by the driver involved yet another lecture & a tremendous amount of apologizing. So, I said I would rather walk home and both the police and the driver let a 9 year old kid (and a few others who joined me) walk home a few miles by themselves! :eek:
As we had a new bus driver pretty much every day, sometimes they didn’t know the route. For some reason they always trusted us to tell them the RIGHT way. Foolish bus drivers!
I had the same bus driver from the first day of Kindergarten until I moved at the end of my Sophomore year. And he had been my mom’s bus driver before me.
He was crazy. But awesome.
He always greeted us with a smile. We’d say “Hi Oral!” as we got on the bus and he’d smile and say “Hi girls!” He always played the music we asked him to play. If we brought tapes, he wouldn’t even ask what it was, he’d just put it in. One time, I puked all over the bus…well it was one afternoon, but I puked twice. He didn’t even get mad.
Though one time…I don’t even know what the fuck happened. We were making a left hand turn and I don’t know if he just didn’t see the car or what, but he didn’t hit the car…he ran over the fucking thing! I remember the whole bus was lifted off the ground, and there was the most horrible crunching sound you’ll ever hear. He was really shook up. I don’t blame him. We were freaking the fuck out. Fortunately the people in the car at the time wasn’t hurt. We were all herded out of the bus, about three blocks from school, and then to add insult to injury, it started to snow! Ugh. Anyway, the road was covered in smashed car bits for days after that. My dad drove by the accident that morning and remarked later, “Somehow I should have known it was old Oral…”
he didn’t get fired or quit or anything. A few weeks later he drove off the side of the road and got the bus stuck in about 3 feet of mud and snow, though I don’ think that was entirely his fault.
Our bus driver was named Ralph. Very cool old dude. I can’t think of anyone who didn’t like him. Never did anything too crazy, but once in a while would get the bus sideways on the ice and snow. That was kind of memorable. I’m sure he’s got to be dead by now, so RIP, old friend. You were a good man.
Mary drank vodka out of her thermos while she drove. :eek:
After Mary got fired, we got Diane. Diane did the following in the space of a year:
She had to turn the bus around in a side street near my stop. Her first year, some construction guys started parking their trucks on the side street in such a way that she couldn’t turn around. After telling them three times to park a little bit further down the street, she deliberately plowed into the side of one of their trucks!
During an ice storm, she slammed on the brakes. The bus went sliding around and did a 360, taking out a mailbox in the process. When we came to a stop, Diane got off the bus, picked up the mailbox and the mail, put them on the doorstep, and went on about her merry way.
Sideswiped a stop sign. It looked deliberate. One side of the sign was bent back and the pole was tilted at an angle after that. I think it’s still that way to this very day.
In college we had the “Bus Nazi”. He was an all-around bad man.
He would glare at you if you showed your bus pass too quickly and would often grab it out of your hands mumbling to himself. My bus pass was in a slot in my wallet that was clear plastic so I didn’t have to take it out every time, so he would grab my wallet and my keys which made me extremely nervous.
After the worst incident I stopped riding his busses. If he pulled up I’d say “I don’t ride with you, you’re crazy”
It started that morning. We left the dorm stop and started down the hill toward campus. There was one pretty well known blind girl that would walk with her seeing eye dog around campus. On this day she had a new dog who proceeded to lead her out in front of the bus which was barrelling down one of the main hills on campus. Fun! He screeched to a stop and proceeded to scream at the girl (because it’s her fault!) as he drove past. I understand that he was scared by this near accident so for that I was prepared to forgive him.
We pull up the next hill and onto campus proper. A girl sees him coming (100 yards away or so) and knows that there is a bus stop just before the crosswalk she wants to use. She starts to cross. She has plenty of time as he isn’t going very fast. He screeches to a stop again, throwing us against the seatbacks in front of us, screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. At this point he’s at least 50 yards away AND at the stop at which he’s required to drop off people. No need to slam on the brakes as he was supposed to stop here anyway.
I got off the bus at this point and walked the rest of the way to class.
At the end of the day, I’m tired, hot and it’s begun to drizzle. I thought about walking back to the dorm, but I grab a bus instead. I get on before I realize it’s Bus Nazi. Uh oh.
He, for some reason, blows past four stops on campus, leaving confused looking students standing in the rain and scared looking students stuck on the bus ride from hell. He pulls into the dorm parking lot, skips the first two stops going about 50mph on the worst roads in Kansas (the back wheels left the pavement several times) slams to a stop halfway between the next two stops and screams at everyone “GET OFF. NOW.” We didn’t argue.
[homer]I think it was called The Bus that Couldn’t Slow Down.[/homer]
On snowy mornings, he would fishtail the bus when pulling into the circle at the front of the high school. Great fun when you were riding in the back.
Another morning he must’ve neglected to top the tanks, because he stalled the thing at a stop sign and couldn’t get it started again. We had to wait for another (already full) bus to come along, and of course, there wasn’t a seat for me. I’m still traumatized every time I see a school bus!
Oh, once in elementary school we were making so much noise or fighting or something, so the driver, after several threats, really did drive the bus back to the school. I think the troublemakers ended up at the principal’s office.
