When I was just starting high school in PA we had a bus driver who was, as far as I can tell, completely oblivious to whatever went on during the ride. Needless to say we took advantage of it.
A few weeks into the school year we were riding the bus home from school and a couple of the kids brought water pistols with them, you might remember the old style clear plastic guns. They had free reign since no one else was “armed.” Now back in those days (my god, I finally said it) new water guns were just coming onto the market. Not like they are today mind you, but they looked like real guns and the particular one I had access to fired rapid, machine gun-style bursts. After that first day I packed up my water machine gun, both clips fully loaded, and waited for the bus ride home. On the way in to school before I was expecting it the two guys who got us the day before unleashed again, spraying the inside of the bus and getting the kids nearest to them soaked. I had been watching them and formulating my plan of attack for the ride home later so I was able to move fast…I opened my bag, snapped a clip into the water pistol, and razed the back of the bus with streams of cold water. It was like a scene from a mob movie…people were screaming, diving between seats. The next thing I know I look over and another kid was armed! He had a pump style pistol that sprayed huge amounts of water, kind of similar to the devices you see today. We caught each others eye, smiled, and started getting each other with the water guns. Since we were only two seats apart we managed to cover most of the rear portion of the bus with water…it was wild. And it didn’t end there! We all dried off an went to class, most kids probably thinking about how they would deal with the ride home. As it turned out we wound up spraying people outside the bus, this time doing drive-by style assaults on other buses and such. This lasted for about 2-3 weeks, we stopped of our own accord rather than anything that the bus driver said. Makes me think, if some kids were to try that today the FBI would probably show up about 5 minutes later.
This is a rather dim memory from 1st or 2nd grade.
I was sitting in the front seat of the bus. My seatmate was the bus driver’s son who was older (say 5th or 6th grade). The kid is mouthing off to the driver. Driver threatens boy with a whipping. Kid says he doesn’t care.
Driver proceeds to bend kid over the wall between the front seat and the stair well and whale on him with a belt for at least two minutes.
Kid stands up, says, “That didn’t hurt,” and sits back down.
Our bus driver from about 6th grade through when I started driving to school was named Gordy. We swore that Gordy was drunk a lot of the time, but never found any convincing evidence. Some highlights (entries marked with a * are secondhand information and may be exxagerated):
After everyone was picked up, the bus was supposed to stop at the high school, and then the middle school. Gordy would often a) go around the circle at the high school, forget to stop, then go around again b) forget the high school completley and drive straight to the middle school or c) forget both schools and drive straight to the bus garage
He was telling some kid in the front seat about his recent hunting trip and how he slipped on a wet rock and hit his head, then laughed maniacally about it for 5 minutes
3.* Ran over a chicken and said “there’s one less chicken in the world”. A couple weeks later, he did the same to a dog “there’s one less dog in the world”
There was one spot where there was a big bump in the road that, when hit fast and at the right angle, cause us (the cool kids in the back) to fly upwards, sometimes hitting our heads on the ceiling. After awhile, we created score cards and scored Gordy on the bumps. Sometimes he’d pretend not to notice and go slow over the bump, but when he was in a good mood he’d go really fast and check his rearview mirror for the score and laugh.
Sometimes he’d forget to pick up kids he didn’t like and drive right past their houses, forcing them to wait for the bus to come by again (he retraced parts of the route) or find some other way to school. Once he passed a girl with glasses and said “I’ll get that four-eyes later”
He tried to turn around in a driveway and got the bus stuck in the snow, fervently denying that the bus was stuck even as he called another to come get us.
7.* After missing a turnoff, he cut through a yard on the corner to get onto the road that he passed.
After noticing that I wore neon shoelaces, he gave me a whole package of like 25 pairs. He also had me deliver honey that he bought from my dad by bringing it onto the bus.
Once, he did the entire route backwards, just for fun, it seems. Of course, nobody was ready for the bus because it came at the wrong time.
While backing out of a driveway, he backed into the mailbox across the road. Hearing a sickening crunch, he asked “did I hit it?”
That’s all I can remember now. I know there was so much more, and not being able to remember them all makes me feel old, and it was only 5 years ago that I stopped riding!
I was bussed crossed town to schools, so I have a lot of stories.
I remember in on the last day of school in the third grade, the bus driver took us to a park on our way home. In the seat behind her was a giant thing of fried chicken and corn on the cobs. We had us a little picnic right there in the park. I don’t remember her name or anything, but I thought that was the nicest thing.
Another bus driver in elementary school designated Fridays as “free days”. We could jump up and down in the seats and be as crazy as we wanted to be. Word got out to the principal and he got in trouble.
Another bus driver used to rap while he drove.
In middle school, Ms. Nash used to sell candy and potato chips WHILE SHE WAS DRIVING THE BUS. Somehow she’d manage to pass over your Blow Pop, take your money, and give you the correct change all without getting into an accident. To this day whenever I think of hot fries, I think of Ms. Nash.
In high school, the Jimmy the bus driver used to stop by the McDonalds and let us load up on snacks before going home. One of the goodie two shoes told on him, though, and he was fired.
My first bus driver was a laconic sort with Vitalis in his hair and big sideburns. He always wore a regular old white T-shirt. There was a big “Wayne” logo on the first big step of the bus. My buddy Michael and I decided that this was the bus driver’s name and we said “Hello Wayne” and “Goodbye Wayne” for the whole year. He never said anything. Didn’t figure it out til much later.
The only thing I remember about my kindergarten bus driver were her fingernails!! Think of long, curly, scary witch fingernails. She cut space in her gloves so her nails could get through.
We were all terrified of her. No one moved. I tried to say hello, etc to her and she either ignored me or snarled at me.
We never had any really cool bus drivers, though the best one I can think of was way back in my first year or two of school. He was really nice, and on the last day of school before a break, he would bring cookies or some other kind of snack for us, which he would give to us as we got on in the afternoon and let us eat them on the bus. The first year we didn’t have him, I was disappointed because we didn’t get anything on the last day in December.
One of the bus drivers during my elementary school years was a rather unkempt looking middle aged guy who had lost one of his forearms and had a prosthetic replacement. Sometimes while waiting in traffic or at the school he would take the prosthetic off and give his back a nice long scratch or reach over and grab something with it. He was also known to sometimes bang it on the ceiling to get the kids attention.
The bus driver during my freshman year of high school was one of the fastest drivers I have ever experienced. Yellow lights and sharp turns meant nothing to her. We had to hold on to the back of the seats in front of us to keep from falling into the aisle. When picking up students, she would not even wait for kids to reach their seats before slamming on the gas pedal again, occasionally knocking students to the floor. I think she actually enjoyed this. And yet for some reason we were late almost every day.
“My elementary school bus driver would keep us in line by regularly scheduling paper ball fights”
“He was crazy. But awesome.”
“Diane was cool. A bit crazy, but cool.”
I never rode the bus, but now I finally understand why, when driving the school bus in Sim City 4, the kids all cheer when you smash into stuff.
Summer camp:
*Left bus running and unattended with us on it, bus nearly rolled into a ravine.
Elementary school (7 years on the bus, well over 30 drivers):
*Forgot to pick us up from school on the first day of school; the school finally called the bus company and they sent another bus.
*Made an illegal left turn onto a local highway every day until he got pulled over and ticketed. His excuse: “It’s just so hard to do those jughandles with this here bus.”
*Backed into a lightpole in the parking lot, causing pole to fall and smash principals car.
*Forgot to pick us up in the morning, repeatedly.
*Called a third-grade student a “Lazy damn bastard”.
*Drove his route, with children on the bus, drunk.
*Backstory: overcrowded buses. One stop (mine) from my old bus route was tacked onto a new bus route, despite being out of the way. THe bus driver would drive the route, drop everyone else off, then make us four come up to the front of bus, and force us to sit and listen to him tell the same damn story about his adopted kids EVERY DAY.
First middle School (1 year, 4 drivers)
*Refused to drive the designated route, randomly skipping stops, tellng us we needed the exercise.
*Refused to let students close the windows on a rainy day.
*Refused to let students open windows on a hot day.
*Pulled over on the side of the road, screamed at us for being too loud, and made us sit in silence the entire ride home.
Second middle school (1 year, 6 drivers):
*Crashed into a parked police car.
*Forgot to pick us up in the morning, showed up half an hour late.
*Forgot to pick us up after school – same day.
*Got lost driving us to ‘school’ (new school, building opened late, we had the first couple days at a summer camp about 45 minutes away), got lost coming to pick us up, got lost driving us home
*Forgot to pick us up after school, again.
*Forgot to pick us up after soccer practice (late bus)
*On the first day at our actual school, had to ask the principal “Now, which way do I go?”
*Refused to let us use our CD players.
*Made us take our soccer cleats off outside the bus.
I gave up on taking the bus in high school. :rolleyes:
The only story I remember clearly happened in high school. We had a sub driver that week, our normal driver was sick (she was cool - she’d give us candy and let us get away with a lot). Now, we’d always at the far curb for the bus, but the sub has this anal-retentive thing about where we were and told us she wouldn’t pick us up unless we were at the near curb. (How our school did it was to drive through the major roads in the subdivision. Wherever kids where waiting, the bus would stop and let them on. This worked wonderfully when you wanted to go to your friend’s house 6 blocks down.)
Us being the teenaged kids we were, decided to wait where we normally did and see what she would do. In our minds she would either pick us up and we would win, or she’d stop at the other curb and she’d win. She did neither and drove right past us. I heard that the kids on the bus started shouting, “Kids! You left kids back there!”
We managed to find rides to school but no one liked her after that.
Not my bus driver, but my little brother’s busdriver, Tim. Tim likes to scavenge for furniture that people leave out on the curb for big trash day. At least three times this year he has taken furniture from our street. He once made some kids get out of the bus and load a chair into the back of the bus. He also came up to our door and asked us to save him some tables that we had sitting out because they were too big to fit in the bus. He came back around eight that night and loaded them up into his car (which was smaller than the bus, but apparently more suited to hauling tables around.)
We used an intercity bus rather than a school bus. The drivers would stop at the variety store in town to pick up parcels and a coffee, but would leave the bus running.
So one day Mickey Bruce (grade 7) decided to drive the bus across the downtown core.
I remember my high school bus driver… Kenny. This man had maybe 4 teeth and let people smoke pot in the back of the bus (until one of them burned a seat- God forbid the bus get hurt!
Our bus, mind you, was not in good condition. You could play a radio station or turn the heat on, but not both at the same time. In response to this, Kenny brought in a little tape player and ONE cassette, which we listened to all winter, twice a day. On one side: Jimi Hendrix playing the National Anthem. On the other: Ted Nugent and AC/DC. Every. Day. Because of this, I will forever despise Cat Scratch Fever. This was also the summer he sideswiped the substitute teacher. We feared for our life on that bus…
