A Season for Everything

Last night was the bus company’s annual driver appreciation banquet. It’s the company’s chance to do something nice for the drivers (they have to do something because they don’t pay as well as other companies) and for everyone to get a pat on the back for a job well done. Rookies are introduced, service pins are awarded to those with one, five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five years in. More than that and I think they have a nice padded room waiting at the local mental hospital (just kidding). Perfect attendance is recognized and the top 25 drivers. Drivers 25-11 get a certificate and a handshake. Drivers 10-6 get a nice company jacket embroidered with their name and a handshake. Drivers 5-1 get a jacket and a cash award. There are 118 drivers. Last year I was number nine. This year I was number six! Woot!! It was kind of embarassing, though. The man doing the presenting went on and on about how I’d let the kids decorate my bus back when the Steelers went to the Super Bowl and how I’d led them in a big on-bus pep rally.

I also told my supervisor I wouldn’t be back in the fall. I didn’t want to do it last night, but my hand kind of got forced. It was on the fly and we didn’t get to talk, but hey, it’s done and over with. Time to move on.

Matt called last night. Could I please come get him when I finished working today (I had a half day, remember)? Graduation was tonight. He wanted to see a few friends get their diplomas. Oh, and can I have him home in time to work tomorrow at 4:00 p.m.?

Sigh. It was Tim who answered the phone and Tim who told him “yes.” It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 95 degrees today with very high humidity. It was beyond sweltering on the bus. The last thing I felt like doing was jumping into the car and making the 3 hour round trip to bring Matt home. I did it anyway. That’s what moms do.

So, is he at graduation? Nope. He went, but it stormed and the ceremony was moved inside. Each graduate only gets 2 tickets for family members in that case. And all that rain? It killed his cell phone. He took it to the mall and found out he has to pay a $50 deductable and call the manufacturer to get it replaced.

Taking Matt back tomorrow is promising not to be a simple thing either. The refrigerator started acting up again on Monday….you know, the one that spontaneously fixed itself a few weeks back and the repair guy said he couldn’t fix what wasn’t broke? Well, the repairman is coming back tomorrow. Sometime between 7 a.m. and noon. Replacing the compressor is supposed to take 2 hours. I had to ask my mom to be “on call.” If the repairman comes too late she will take Matt back.

Otherwise, I made it through the last day. YAHOO! I got cards from the kids and even a gorgeous bouquet of roses from a sweet little girl. As for the thorn in my side (the infamous and notorious “D”), his only comment came when he was getting off the bus at school this morning….”I only have to see you one more time.”

Right back at ya, kid. Right back at ya.

Dear Sir or Madame,

It is now 7:00 P.M., a mere three hours after I delivered your child safely to the bus stop. A feat accomplished inspite of the fact that Johnny, Susie and all their friends were screaming at each other, at me, and from time to time at people who weren’t even on the bus. I endured no less than 30 choruses of We Will Rock You. I signed yearbooks for everyone that asked, settled disputes, reprimanded those who felt the need to wander about the bus at will and I did it with a smile….because children are precious (or I am completely insane).

I have spent the last 2 1/2 hours scrubbing the inside of my bus. I can almost hear you thinking, “So?” Let me tell you what cleaning the inside of a bus means to the driver. It means cleaning out the cracks in the seats where Johnny and Susie have been stuffing things all year. Tonight I pulled from the dark recesses of the seats; used tissues, the garbage from every breakfast you didn’t wake Johnny or Susie up early enough to eat at home (perhaps they’d get up better in the morning if you didn’t let them stay up until all hours of the night), secret notes (many that would curl your hair if you knew the content), jewelery, toys, pens, pencils, gum (chewed, of course), candy (always sticky) and a small mountain of unidentifiable stuff. Cleaning the inside of a bus also means cleaning the windows where Johnny and Susie have felt compelled to educate us all winter long drawing explicit pictures in the steam or writing the “wonderful” new words they are learning or if Johnny and Susie are small, it just means cleaning the slobber marks where they have licked the windows all winter (don’t you teach them anything about germs?). It means scrubbing boogers off of the walls, the seats, the window frames and anywhere else Johnny and Susie can think to wipe them (I actually prefer the ones who eat their boogers). Lastly, it means going through the whole bus, seat by seat with a bottle of Goo-Gone and a paint scraper prying up all the semi-melted hard candies and wads of chewed gum your precious children have spit on the floor or stuck to the bottom of the seat or the wall. Oh, and please don’t think that because I haven’t mentioned it, that Johnny and Susie don’t do anything worse. They do.

I realize that as a parent you want your child to be protected and looked after. You don’t want them harassed or picked on. You want a driver that maintains control and transports your child without incident and when there is an incident you want it delt with swiftly and justly. Isn’t that just special? Do you mind if I ask you how you handle yourself and the situation in your own vehicle when Johnny and Susie start bickering, rough housing, whining, screaming or crying? Do you get distracted from the road? Do you see and hear everything that happens in the seat behind you? Do you honestly know who started it or who did what to whom every single time? Do you get stressed? Do you lose your temper? Do you want to quit, get out of the vehicle and never look back? Do Johnny and Susie ever verbally abuse you or threaten you with physical harm? Do you have someone jumping down your throat criticizing the way you handled the situation? Does someone come running to Johnny and Susie’s defence, because there is no way those precious angels would do something like that? Are you afraid to discipline too strictly because everyone is sue-happy these days and you don’t want to be a story on the 6:00 news? Think about how you react and handle things with only one or two kids in the family car. Now think about Johnny and Susie’s bus driver trying to react to 50 or more kids while maintaining control of a 30′, 16, 000 lb. school bus.

As the school year draws to a close, many of you will buy little gifts for Johnny and Susie to give to their bus driver as a gesture of thanks (mostly because it is the correct thing to do, not because you genuinely appreciate the job they have done). I’d like to suggest that you save the money and give a gift that would be most welcome. What is it? Character. As in helping your child achieve some level of it. Teach Johnny and Susie manners. Teach them respect for others and themselves. Teach them gratitude. Teach them to take responsibility for their own actions. Teach them obedience to authority. Yes, it will make the bus driver’s job easier, but the greater gift in the long run will be to Johnny and Susie who will grow up to be kind, responsible, well-mannered, productive adults.

Sincerely,
The Bus Driver

Please? Because I am sure my mind has flown the coop. Why else would I do the job I do? Bratty kids. Haughty parents. And innocence all around. It’s enough to make me scream. As a matter of fact, I’ve done that today. It might have relieved my stress enough to prevent a stroke. Maybe.

It all started with a fight on Tuesday. Elementary kids. On the bus. Bad enough I had to turn off the bus and leave my seat to break it up. I did not see or hear what led up to the fight. My bad luck. All I could (and did) do was turn in slips on the boys I saw involved and leave it for the school to figure it out. Turns out the fathers got into a fight themselves over the fight. Nice. Real mature. Great example you’re setting there fellas. Then parents began calling principals. And the bus company. And the school district’s transportation dept. One boy has a black eye. His parents photographed it and took him for x-rays. No skin off my back. For my part, situation handled. Or so I thought.

Today my boss met me between my high school and elementary runs. I had to speak with the principal. He in turn still has to talk to the transportation director and who knows who else…before he can even call the boys in to talk to them. Then the momma of the kid with the black eye cornered me at the bus stop. And ripped me a new one for a good five minutes about how her poor little boy shouldn’t have to endure such awful bullying. No. He shouldn’t. But what goes around eventually comes around. I can’t tell momma that. She doesn’t want to hear that most days her precious angel is more like demon spawn.

Enter “Precious Angel’s” best-friend, the notorious “D”, I’ve written about in the past. This morning “D” was in a vile, hateful, spiteful, abuse-spewing mood. And lucky me….it was all for (and aimed at) me! I cannot discipline “D” because he does not listen. If I try he runs to momma and says I pick on him.

All three boys deserve to be punished for Tuesday’s fight, but after today I am sure that if “Precious Angel” and “D” get punished it is going to come back and bite me where the sun don’t shine.

I need to find a new job.

UPDATE! After I threatened to quit this morning, I guess my boss figured out that I was pretty stressed and just might be serious. This afternoon he threw me a major bone. He told me I am first on the list for a brand new bus and should have it in the fall. He just “didn’t want me to think my efforts aren’t appreciated.” Wow. Nobody ever knows ahead of time that they’re getting a new bus. And the cherry on top? I know three little brats that got suspended for two days! (I am really trying hard not to grin and gloat. I’m failing miserably.)

Thank God, and I do (thank Him, that is), that this is the last day of my work week. Tomorrow is a scheduled snow make-up day and since we haven’t had any snow this winter….three day weekend for me! I couldn’t be happier after the week morning I’ve had. I had to rearrange the whole seating chart on my bus. Too many kids were complaining that so-and-so was being mean to them, the back of the bus was out of control and yesterday a father asked me to move his son away from some kids. Sigh. I hate changing seats around. I spend hours wracking my brain for what I’m sure is going to be the perfect arrangement, the one that will magically make the kids little angels. Yeah, right. More often than not I end up with a bunch of pissed off, pre-pubescent, rugrats. Today was no exception. Most of the kids did actually take it in stride, but “D”, my problem child, bawled all the way to school. Now before you go feeling all sorry for D and hating me, let me fill you in.

D is in 5th grade, the last year of elementary school in our district. D is a bully who picks on the other kids. D does not take discipline well. Nothing is ever D’s fault. Either D didn’t do whatever it is at all (even though caught red-handed) or it is someone else’s fault that D is misbehaving. D also has a problem with control (or impulsiveness). Bus rules are pretty clear and simple: Stay seated, talk quietly, keep your hands to yourself, face the front and no eating. There are others, but those are the main ones we try to enforce for safety reasons. D is rarely sitting down or facing forward. D has one volume, LOUD. D’s hands manage to reach out and touch someone else fairly often. D is disrespectful of authority and seriously mouthy. Every single time I’ve had to correct D, the woeful tale of how I pick on D travels home and D’s momma gets involved. She has at one time or another, called my boss, called the principal, written me letters and once even put D on the bus and then followed me through the entire route to corner me at the school and basically rip me a new one in front of God and everybody for correcting D. Fortunately, my boss knows D and always backs me up. It doesn’t hurt that D has problems in school, too.

Anyway, in changing the seats I tried to clear up as many of the problems as I could. One of those problems was who D was sitting with (a neighbor and D’s best friend, J). D and J are the best of friends, but they are a lot alike and they tend to get, uh….rambunctious. I seperated them to avoid ending up having to write them up. I did not isolate D. I put D with a younger sibling. Close as they are, that arrangement didn’t please either of them. So, I moved both of them to seats with one of their good friends. I just refused to put D back with J. I tried to explain to D that it was not a punishment, that I was trying to prevent having to report poor behavior, because if D is written up one more time, D will be suspended off the bus. D is with a good friend, but still bawled all the way to school and refused to talk to me so I could try and explain. I warned my boss to expect another call.

On to happier things.

FTS posted the link to an awesome clip of Dallas sportscaster, Dale Hansen, speaking about character and integrity in the NFL (Dallas in particular), but it really applies to all professional sports. It’s a few minutes long, but watch the whole thing. It’s worth it.

In case you didn’t notice (or hear) I have a new toy over on my sidebar. Thanks to ChesneyGirl for the link.

and maybe your boss, a perspective employer, your college, your bank, your insurance company and who-knows-who-else!? That’s the latest word on blogs and online social sites, like MySpace and Facebook, in particular. While people (teens and young adults are emphasized) use personal web sites to meet people with similar views/interests and most are at least fairly smart about privacy, there are those who use their sites as tell-ALL forums. It’s easy to find sites where the owner brags about drunken weekend (or weekday) binges, illegal activities, and heaven knows what else. Lots of people publish pictures to validate the stories. The thing is, what you put out on the internet is no longer completely private…no matter what you do! It used to be that all you had to worry about was a sexual preditor finding your kids. Now you need to warn them (and take the advice yourself) that colleges check these sites looking for information on applicants, so do some employers (and the number is growing). Insurance companies look for information to see if you have a drinking history before insuring you. So, basically, what the experts are saying is that you shouldn’t put anything out there that you wouldn’t want any of those people to know about. There’s a good article on this in today’s Tribune-Review if you’d like to read more about it.

And as for the weekend…

We drove down to visit Matt (who is getting a copy of the Trib article mailed to him) yesterday and take him grocery shopping. I should have taken it as an omen of how the day would go when Tim stopped at a convience store to buy drinks and Megan got red Gatorade, which she promptly spilled all over herself and the backseat. We had to whip into the next shopping center to 1) buy her a whole new outfit at Target and 2) buy cleaning supplies so Tim could work on the car. That just seemed to set the tone for Megan’s day. She alternated between being in a foul, whiney mood to being in one of her manic moods where she talks (literally) non-stop and pushes everyone’s buttons on purpose for the shear amusement (hers, not ours) of it. I thought I did a fairly good job of being patient at Sam’s Club while she kept kicking the shopping cart away or putting gargantuan boxes of stuff I had no intention of buying into it. It was Tim that finally lost it and since he and Megan are (frighteningly) alike, it was not good. I did my best to calm them both down and they made up on the way home. It just really ruined the time with Matt.

There are so many restaurants down by Matt’s apartment that whenever we go down, we usually try some place that’s new to at least one of us. Yesterday we tried Quakersteak & Lube. The food was good, but that was about all I’ll say for it. The garage decor is okay, but it was as drafty and cold as the real thing. We were seated at a table right near the soda fountain, napkins, silverware, etc., so waiters were congregated there the whole time. And yet, no one waited on us until I put my hand on the arm of one and asked if anyone actually waited on the table we were sitting at. Then there was the whole bathroom thing. It looked like a gas station bathroom. It smelled like a gas station bathroom. It was decorated with framed, glossy photos of men in Speedos (or less). Most disturbing, when you closed the stall door there was a little mirror, about 3″x8″, hung so as to be at eye-level while you’re uh, taking care of business. What? Do they think I’m going to put on make-up at the same time?

Today we’re heading up to our friends’ farm. We were supposed to be going to help install the new kitchen cabinets someone made, but he called them last night and said they weren’t quite done. So, now we get to go just for fun and to help celebrate the wife’s birthday (the cabinets were supposed to be done and get installed as her birthday present…so we’re not mentioning those). I made an awesome Angel Lush with Pineapple Cake

The doors hissed open at my second elementary stop one morning and an unusually subdued LaVeda crossed the street and very solemnly climbed the stairs. Looking at her feet, she stopped beside my seat. Suddenly, she looked up, crooked her head at me and her whole face bloomed into a wide (semi-toothless) grin and she announced……“I’ve got sea monkeys in my pocket.”

Nasty weather we’re having. It started around supper time last night with a highly unusual “thunder snow.” It started with thunder and lightening, then the wind started blowing (hard) and the freezing rain sandblasted the house….then the snow started. And it hasn’t stopped yet. Once every hour or so we get hit with a squall that dumps a half inch of snow (or more) in a very short amount of time. The wind is still an issue, too. It’s January. In the mountains of SW Pennsylvania. So, why is this weather such a surprise to everyone?

Today, two of our buses were in accidents. The first got hit from behind by a coal truck. There were 25 kids on board. Only one broken bone. It could have been worse. There were no injuries in the second incident, but it tied up one side of town for hours.

A new driver (first day driving on her own) had two brothers on her elementary run bring in a bottle of prescription pills and take some on the bus. Welcome to the public school system.

The high school and middle school were locked down this morning. An alternative education student (a student who is so “bad” that he/she is removed from the general school population, but isn’t quite bad enough to warrant going to juvenile) threatened another student. That’s about all that’s clear. Depending on who you hear the story from he either told the other student he had a gun in his locker and would shoot him or he had the gun on him or there never was a gun or they found one in his locker and he was arrested, or not. I watched the news, but nothing was on.

Is it the weather? Is it the full moon tonight?

I’ve been watching American Idol every night it’s on. I do enjoy these audition shows. You have to wonder if there are really this many people in the world who honestly believe they are fabulously talented singers (when they actually couldn’t carry a tune across the road in a bucket) or do they know they aren’t and just do the most amazingly hideous auditions ever to get their 30 seconds of fame? Is fame so desirable that even bad fame is better than no fame?

Only a week and a half until the Super Bowl. I’m letting the kids on my elementary run decorate the bus with Steeler signs they make. They’ve got quite a lot of spirit. Friday they are wearing their black and gold and I’m going to take pictures to send to the local television stations (they’ve been showing lots of fan pictures) and the paper. I’ll post one on here for you to see.

I skipped Weight Watchers tonight because of the weather. Okay, so I probably could have gotten there. I was out driving in this crap all day, but that’s exactly why I didn’t feel like dealing with it tonight. But I’ve been good. Honest.

and it’s cold and very, very windy. It wasn’t enough, however, to make the powers that be cancel school. Drat. Instead, there was a 2-hour delay which really didn’t improve conditions. I managed in the bus, but all the secondary roads were (and still are) snow covered. With all the wind drifting is a big issue out there in the boonies, too.

I guess the delay did serve one purpose. Daughter informed me at 8:05 a.m. that the 8th grade Christmas dance is tonight, she is going and I need to buy her a dress. Hmm…had it been a normal morning I wouldn’t have seen her before I left. Wonder when she would have let me in on the plans?