Crazy stuff your school bus driver did

In My Humble Opinion
61

This isn’t, strictly speaking, a school bus story because it was a public bus, but it involves a schoolgirl and a bus.

This schoolgirl was rather attactive, well built for 17 and somewhat chatty. Her stop was the last one on the route (one past mine). Coming home late she was the last on this particular banana (articulated) bus and was chatting up the driver. He got distracted, missed his turn, went down a dead end street, tried to turn round, jacknifed the bus and had to be towed out.

She was pretty impressed with herself for that little effort.

62

Well, this isn’t a mean bus driver story but it was so nice it’s worth sharing. I had the one of the coolest bus drivers, and everyone else thought so too. He would let us talk really loud and all that junk kids love to do, and everybody, including the “bad kids” would say “Goodbye” or “Have a nice day.” One Friday I accidentally left my flute on the bus. This was right before a big recital, so I was freaking out and trying to get public transportation on the line, when suddenly I heard a horn. When I went to the front door there was my bus. I went out and the driver gave my flute back (meanwhile I’m thanking the lord that I wrote my address on the tag). How sweet is that?

I made sure to give him a box of donuts the next day. :slight_smile:

63

Crikey – I have a friend who had a busdriver like that in the States in the very early 70s – would pull over constantly, both on the way to school, and on the way home. Her parents ended up frantic with worry once when she was nearly an hour late because of this guy; much of the ‘noise’ at that point was weeping, frightened kiddies (the ages were 6-10 on the bus).

When I was in high school, I rode a school bus for us rural kids going to school in the city, and it picked up several different Catholic schools. I rode it for three years, and I hated it so much I developed anxiety and panic attacks, lost about 10 pounds in weight, and could not concentrate in my studies in afternoon classes because I dreaded the boys on that bus. The first school picked up in the afternoon was an all boys’ school, and I was the only girl at the second stop, my school. The bus picked me up at a traffic light because the driver would not go around the school to park at the door to wait for me – I would have to jump onto the bus and she would pull away if the light was green; I was constantly falling or crashing into the seats.

The boys were absolute monsters, too, since they knew I was so timid and shy; the busdriver refused to do anything because, after my parents complained, she said she was worried they would pick on her.

The next year was another driver, and I still dreaded the bus and the boys, but this driver put a stop to their nonsense with me the first day; she was appalled at the stuff they tried to do to me, and how they were bragging about all the stuff they’d done the year before.

That was 20 years ago, and I still get angry thinking about it…

Then there was the guy driver who would let one of the girls from the other girls’ school sit in his lap whilst he drove on the motorway :eek:

64

Crikey – the guy bus driver I mentioned used to allow the kids in the back to smoke pot cos I guess he figured it kept the rest of us quiet…strange times…

65

I started kindergarten just a month after I turned five years old, so I was pretty young. I had to ride the bus, and I was very nervous about it. One day there was a substitute driver, and he went past my stop. I went into complete hysterics. He felt so bad, he stopped the bus, walked me back to my house, and tried to give me Pizza Hut mints he had in his pocket, while apologizing to my mother. My mother then arranged to have me stay mornings and afternoons with a babysitter who lived within walking distance of the school–no more bus till I was in third grade.

66

These are some great stories.

When I was in High School I had to ride the bus my freshman year. We had an endless procession of new and different drivers, 99% of them just dead silent, drove the bus. Then we got this one long haired guy who let us smoke cigarettes on the bus, which was cool. Most of us were smokers anyway no nobody really narked him out. Well one day he was just gone, wherever iternerant bus drivers go.
So one kid who had just moved to our school gets on the bus, lights himself up a smoke. This new guy tells him to put it out or there will be trouble. This kid ( I think his name was Matt) just goes off on the driver, calling him all sorts of names, nice and chock full of 4 letter words and long winded remarks about the mans sexual orientation.
He keeps this up until we’re almost all the way home. Just running his mouth about this poor guy.
Well, Mr. New Bus Driver man snapped. He stopped the bus in the middle of the road, put it in park, came back there and delivered one of the most serious beat downs in the history of ass kickings. I mean the kid was unconcious about 10 seconds into it. The guy looks around at the rest of us all wild eyed and sputtering about how he didn’t need this shit, how he was a freaking chef, not some bus driver. As soon as he was back at the front of the bus, we jumped out of the back emergency door and hauled ass into our neighborhood. Never saw the guy or the new kid with the smart mouth ever again.

67

The only driver who’s name I remembered was Geraldo, who I had in 8th grade. The one thing I remember about him is that no matter how bad we were, all he’d ever do is go “hey, shut up” … except one day one of us was being extra bad and he pulled over to the road and screamed as loud as he could HEEEEEEY SHUTUP!!! and then proceeded on

one thing that I never understood then, and to this day still don’t understand is how these otherwise anonymous bus drivers managed to instill a level of fear in my elementary school classmates that neither substitute teacher nor playground monitor were able to. There was a strict unspoken, unwritten understanding with every single bus driver I ever had in elementary school that anything goes under all situations, up to and including when the bus is pulled over at the side of road … UNTIL the ceiling lights get turned on. At this point, it didn’t matter who you are or what you were capable of, you’d sit down and keep quiet and be on your best behavior. The second the lights get turned off again, it was business as usual. The other exception was when a busdriver threatened to “write someone up”, which was the terminology for filling out an incident report which would go to the student’s teacher or principal. This seemed to be the worst punishment known to mankind, although I never did find out what the circumstances of being “written up” entailed. The worst kid in my school, who never minded mouthing off to teachers or getting sent to the principal’s office on an almost daily basis, broke down in tears the one time he actually was written up.

68

Dick was a really absentminded old guy, and he used to run over empty trash cans that got in front of the bus, and one time he rear-ended a Buick.

69

From fourth grade on, I went to school in a rural school district in NC. At that time (the 70s), there were NO adult bus drivers (at least in any of the schools in our end of the county.) All of the bus drivers were high school students, who left school during 5th period (the next to last period of the day) and went to go drive the elementary school routes, and then returned to drive the high school route. (There were no middle schools at that time.)

One of my friends started driving a bus her sophomore year in high school just after she turned 16. She learned to drive a manual transmission in a school bus, as she’d never driven one before.

More frightening than that was what had happened with a bus driver I’d had a few years earlier. Jan (of the tight jeans and bleached blond hair) liked to flirt with him, and kept begging him to let her drive the bus. (We were probably in 8th or 9th grade at the time.) So, when we got to a deserted part of the route, Danny would let her sit on his lap and drive the bus.

That summer, Jan and I both took driver’s ed class. I found out there that she had incredibly bad vision. She was not allowed to drive without her glasses on, and her coke-bottle lenses were significantly thicker than mine. (They detracted from her sexpot looks, though, so that was the only time any of us ever saw her with glasses at school.)

70

Can you stand another early 80s memory? Our bus driver Dwayne taught us the lyrics to “The Message,” which he had blaring from his boom box sitting on the dash board. You haven’t lived until you’re miding your own business, waiting for the light to change, and all of a sudden you hear a busload of inner-city under-9 year olds screaming down at you , "Don’t. Push. Me!!! Cos. I’m. Close. To. The. Edge!!! I’m. Try. 'In. Not. To. Lose. My. Head!!! Huh Huh Huh Huh!"
Then the light changes and the bus takes off.

71

My partner grew up in rural Mississippi (born in 1956) and he was a bus driver in high school; he drove high schoolers, I believe.

I ought to ask him to contribute to this thread!

72

What were you kids doing?

73

When I was in grade school, we had Andy, who had driven my dad and my aunts when THEY were little. Andy was the coolest. He’d give us candy and for Halloween and Christmas he’d give us gift certificates for McDonalds.

74

I attended a high school in Guilford County NC ('tween Greensboro and Raleigh) one year in the early eighties, and even crazier than the bus drivers was the policy for recruiting the bus drivers.

For, you see, the bus drivers at Eastern Guilford were the varsity football players.

That’s right. They picked the rowdiest, least respectful and most difficult to manage students because, of course, they had to be the most trustworthy bus drivers.

Actually, it was probably because, being football players, nobody messed with 'em.

That, and, well, they probably could have used a head start on their career path. (I keed, I keed!)

Now, since this was in the heart of tobacco country, everybody smoked. Even high schoolers. There were designated smoking areas in the high school. And of course, the buses were smoking areas, too.

And the bus races… in the mornings, the drivers raced the buses down the access road to the high school, and lined the buses up in the parking lot. It was a game to see how close they could line up the buses without hitting each other… with more points the faster they whipped the buses into their parking spots. Students had to squeeze out from between the buses. Several times that year, buses smacked rearview mirrors… they were that close. It was no wonder the principal had established a rule that all buses had to be arrived and parked before anyone could “de-bus.”

Some of the country roads were in horrible condition… and of course, this made for a great game for the drivers. The one that drove my route would use the potholes as an excuse to slalom the bus, and of course in wintertime, fishtail the bus whenever possible.

This same driver ran over a girl’s dog on our route… it was the stop right after mine, and the poor girl’s Cocker Spaniel ran out to meet her as she arrived home from school. In NC, and most of the south, an animal in the road faces about a 50/50 proportion of drivers who will either avoid them, or aim for them. It’s considered sport.

The dog lost.

The only bus driver that year who lost his bus driving privileges was the one caught by the State Police while nailing the dairy farmer’s daughter in the back of the bus. He had talked her into staying on the bus, or had intentionally missed the turn to her farm, or something, and the girl’s mother reported her missing. So the word went out, and the troopers saw the bus parked off the highway… so they checked it out.

I betcha though, if it had been the Sheriff’s deputy who had found 'em, the incident would not have been reported.

Instead, the driver got arrested… for, you see, he was eighteen… and the farmer’s daughter was not of the age of consent.

75

In kindergarten, we got sent home from school early one day because it was snowing. The bus driver pulled up to the end of my driveway and I noticed my mom wasn’t waiting for me there in the car as she usually was (our driveway was about a 1/ 4 mile long). I told the bus driver I was scared and didn’t think my mom was even at home and could she please just drop me off at the neighbor’s house just down the street?

Nope. That was against the rules. I had to get off at my designated bus stop no matter what. So there I was, five years old and freezing, walking alone down the long driveway. I was right–my mom was not home and the door was locked. I had to trek half a mile in a blizzard to the neighbor’s house. Of course, it wasn’t really a blizzard–maybe about an inch of snow on the ground–but to a little kid alone and scared, that’s a blizzard. My neighbor dried me off and warmed me up with some hot chocolate until my mom got home. I can’t remember what happened after that but I do remember that horrible bus driver drove my bus for another year or so.

Now for a good bus driver story-After the mean bus lady from the above incident left, we got the coolest bus driver ever. His name was Shed (which I remember clearly because it was such an odd name) and he was apparently a magician in training. His dream was to become a professional magician and he practiced his routines on us kids. He’d pull quarters out of our ears and candy out of our coat pockets. Once he even pulled a necklace from behind my ear and gave it to me. I still have it, actually.

76

I went to afternoon kindergarten, so on the way to school we had about 8 5-year olds on the bus, and that’s it.

For a while, it was a sport to sneak down and lie on the floor. If the stop at the light or sign was sharp enough, a 5-year old would slide down a couple seats on his stomach.

Good times.

77

I am a school bus driver.

I used to be an IT manager. I used to make a lot more money. I used to hate my job. Now I love my job.

In general, the kids are great. Loud and rowdy sometimes, but if you can’t deal with loud and rowdy kids, be an IT manager. It pays better and you won’t have to put up with loud and rowdy kids. Of course the hours suck, the pressure ranges from tough to unbearable, you get endless crap from superiors and subordinates, you have to implement insane policies as though you actually believed in them, but … did I mention the great pay?

At any rate, I have seen:

A 2nd grader drop trou to impress the girls. (The girls were not impressed.)

A few kids carry knives on board the bus. (Pretty rare, I’m happy to say.)

A kid who always forogt to get off at his stop, no matter how many times he was reminded.

Fights on the bus.

About 50,000 backpacks left on the bus. (How do they forget something that big?)

Various rude gestures, up to and including bare bottoms out the window. (They lose their bus privileges for awhile for that one.)

Another busdriver once took my kids on a field trip. When he unloaded them so they could board directly onto my bus, he said, "Do you drive these kids every day?

I said, “Yes.”

He replied, “Oh my God!”

In fairness, the kids put any unfamiliar bus driver to the test - how much will he put up with? When I was new and unfamiliar with the route, I made the mistake of asking some kids for directions. Ha ha.

This is probably obvious, but I and every bus driver I know have one thing first, foremost and always in mind - the safety of the kids. Nothing else even comes close. If we say, “I need everyone to stay in their seats” a hundred times during a trip, it isn’t because we are cranky, it’s becaue it’s not safe for them to be in the aisles.

Someone mentioned a driver who never came to a full stop when picking up kids. If true, that’s as irresponsible as anything I’ve ever heard. That driver should not only have been fired, but prosecuted as well.

One last thing - PLEASE stop when you see a bus with the red lights flashing. People ignore our red lights and drive right by every day. A kid could dart across the street to catch the bus and be hit by a car. I’ve personally thought my heart was going to stop when I saw an idiot ignore my red lights and stop sign and nearly hit a kid.

78

My friend Tim the Rabid Gay Truckdriver has my favorite bus driver story. His busdriver was a shop teacher during the daytime and bore a strong resemblance to Scatman “You’ve got the Shine” Crothers except he was missing a couple of fingers (not terribly uncommon for a shop teacher). He was called Cuz and the kids in his shop class and on the bus loved him- he was nice, funny, smart, etc… He was also narcoleptic.

Cuz, according to Tim and his sister and a friend who rode the same bus, would be driving along and occasionally he’d nod off to sleep. It wasn’t a daily thing, but it did happen several times. The strange thing was that none of the kids reported it for the longest time because they really liked him, and instead they did a voluntary “Cuz Duty” each afternoon. One student would always sit behind Cuz to nudge him when/if he dozed off and he’d come back to and straighten the bus. Finally, after a couple of years of this somebody finally did tell their parents and poor Cuz lost his job as bus driver, but not as shop teacher. Luckily this was rural Alabama with lots of long backroads so the odds of running into or over someone or something if you dozed off for two or three seconds wasn’t as great as in town.

In a related sidestory, I am going in for a sleep study this week and when talking about narcolepsy to my neurologist I mentioned the Cuz story. He says he sees at least TWO schoolbus drivers every year who turn out to have major sleep disorders. One, he said, was so bad that he would actually stop the bus some days, get out on the side of the road and do push-ups in order to stay awake.

79

:eek: :eek: :eek:

80

I have been riding the bud for 4 years now and I have had plenty of crazy drivers.

Patty would not let you talk or anything and she would skip stops intentionally.And when you tried to give her the directions to go,she would always yell at you and tell you that she knew where she was going.

Gary,would hit things like trash cans,telephone poles and run onto curbs.

This other bus driver,who’s name I do not know,could not get around this one turn worth crap.He had to try 7 or 8 times.Then another day when we had him,he had to call the safety director to come help him out because he could not swing the bus around the turn.