masthead #47 – school bus
Man, I hated riding the school bus. HATED it. Coupled with my motion sickness, inhaling the stench of diesel fumes every afternoon for an hour (my brother and I were one of the last kids off) ensured that every time I got home, I’d spend a few minutes violently dry heaving next to the mailbox.
We lived on top of a hill, so we had the advantage of seeing our bus turn at an intersection a mile away and know that we had about 10 minutes until it got to our house (our route was the most convoluted thing I’ve ever seen; whoever coordinated it must’ve been a sadistic drunk). My brother and I took turns watching for that bus at the living room window every single morning. Conveniently, our vantage point meant we were staring directly into the sun, so during the winter, there were many times where I thought I saw the bus, but I wasn’t 100% sure because I was completely snow blind. As a result, and due to my paranoid fear that we would miss the bus, my brother and I spent many winter mornings at the end of our long driveway, stamping our feet in frozen frustration while I alternately cursed our bus driver and cried over my frostbitten ears because I thought wearing a stocking cap would muss my mullet.
Our bus was always overpopulated, a 3-kids-to-a-seat, band-instruments-stuffed-everywhere plight I assumed affected everyone, until I rode my friend’s bus one day and saw maybe 10 kids, each enjoying their own expansive seat acreage. Confused, I asked her, “Where is everybody?” She looked back at me, equally confused, and responded, “What do you mean? This is everybody.”
The next day I marched up to our bus driver, a sullen woman with a too-tight perm and a permanent scowl who probably enjoyed foisting those stale popcorn balls on us every Halloween, pointed at the maximum capacity sign that said “68 occupants,” and angrily asserted that there were at least 80 of us on the bus, and that was ridiculous. For my Norma Rae-esque efforts I got yelled at to sit down, and on my huffy way back to my seat (an overturned garbage can that some of the boys had thoughtfully turned into a bench seat for me by covering it with a two by four) I hollered, “I’d love to sit down, only THERE IS NOWHERE TO DO THAT BECAUSE THIS BUS SUCKS!”
What’s your least-favorite memory of riding the school bus?
I did not ever have to ride the actual yellow school bus but I do keep telling my 5 yr old he is lucky he does not have to ride it even though he wants to!
I actually rode the local county bus or, as we called it, the Shame Train. That was an equally awful experience. Worse yet, I went to private school and it took me like an hour and a half or more if I missed the bus to get home. I had to wear my green plaid uniform all the way home and let me tell you public school kids are merciless to private school kids on a county bus.
It was torture for a bevy of reasons so like you I hated the bus!
Comment by Christina — September 1, 2010 @ 9:33 am
My bus sounds exactly like yours: extremely inefficient and LONG route, and three kids to a seat. Also, the kids at my bus stop chose me as the child to pick on in a recreational kind of way, and then the kids on the bus liked to not let me sit down anywhere and then the bus driver would yell at me for not sitting down. I still think it was miserable enough that my parents should have just driven me, even though I realize that would have been pretty inconvenient. Even as an adult, I think my misery weighed more than their inconvenience. I’m not saying AT ALL that I resent it (they didn’t really Get It, and they were taking the totally understandable parental stance that I should learn to deal with things like this), but I WISH it.
Comment by Swistle — September 1, 2010 @ 9:48 am
“I thought wearing a stocking cap would muss my mullet.” BAHAHAHAHAHA.
I didn’t ride the bus for very long, and actually I never minded it. Other than how the vinyl seats stuck to our bare legs when it was hot.
Comment by Jess — September 1, 2010 @ 9:59 am
I never had to ride a bus to school, but I had a horrendously long, cold walk to both my middle school and high school.
My kids ride a bus like that of your friend. There are only about 20 kids on it and my kids are the last pick-up in the morning, so their ride is less than 10 minutes.
Comment by LoriD — September 1, 2010 @ 10:20 am
When I was 7, I sat in the back of the bus because that was the ONLY seat available. However, there is an unwritten rule on the bus that those back seats are for the older kids. And these became our assigned seats for the ENTIRE year. And every day I got harassed by the jerky older kids for sitting back there. I came home every day after school crying. It totally sucked.
Comment by Sarah — September 1, 2010 @ 12:11 pm
When I first started riding the bus (junior high – 7th grade) there was a high school boy at our bus stop. He regularly smoked funny smelling cigarettes at the bus stop, but I was too young to know what they were. I hated the bus, too. I think I rode for a year or so before I begged my mom to take me every day. Actually I’ll have to ask her b/c I just cannot remember bus rides. Were they so painful I blocked them out?
Comment by Shelly — September 1, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
“Muss my mullet” is the best band name ever!
My most vivid memory of the school bus is an incident when I was in first or second grade. A boy 4 years older than me wouldn’t let me get by him to a seat further back. So tiny little me hit him in the head with my brown Tupperware lunch box. I had to go to the principal’s office and his mother accused me of being a bully and demanded I should be suspended. This being the first time that I’d ever been anywhere near the principal, and most certainly NOT his first time, that didn’t happen. I still remember his name, Chris Bevins.
Comment by Emily — September 1, 2010 @ 6:05 pm
This is the best story, ever. I can totally SEE you hollering at the bus driver. Oh, you are awesome.
Comment by Artemisia — September 1, 2010 @ 8:44 pm
Oh, man, I have a lot of the same memories as you – I lived right at the far edge of the school district, so it was a LONG ride, and we were packed in like sardines, with a bunch of us standing in the aisle, like that’s SAFE, right?
Oh! And one time when I was in first grade, I fell asleep on the ride home, and the bus driver didn’t see me slumped down in the seat and went alllllll the way back to the bus garage before discovering – oops! – that he had an extra kid.
Good times! *sigh*
Comment by RockyCat — September 2, 2010 @ 8:09 am